One of the more surprising changes the Detroit Lions made this offseason was the complete removal of rookie minicamp from their schedule. The Lions were the only team that did not participate in a rookie minicamp, and until Friday, they hadn\u2019t offered a clear reason why.<\/p>\n
Coach Dan Campbell talked about the decision and admitted that minicamp has its advantages.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good you get them acclimated, you get them on the field,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cAt least it\u2019s your kind of first chance to do those things. And you can bring in some other guys, some veteran guys, some tryout guys, and you may find somebody you like. So, you get a little bit of that, but it\u2019s not worth it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why is it not worth it anymore? Campbell said for most rookies, their offseason spent training for the draft\u2014not training for football\u2014leaving them completely unprepared and unready for actual on-field work.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the same way every year, they train for the Combine or for all of those drills, they don\u2019t train for football,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cSo, we just got our hands on them for, I guess, going on week three, something like that. So, we just want to be smart with these guys, make sure they\u2019re ready to get on the field to do\u2013even though it\u2019s not a lot to be able to do that, we don\u2019t want any setback.\u201d<\/p>\n
Campbell points to a specific recent incident that got them to change their process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe straw that broke the camel\u2019s back last year was, it was the first walkthrough,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cWe had guys all over the ground, so the league didn\u2019t take too kindly to that, and it\u2019s not worth it. It\u2019s just not worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regardless, he clearly believed the rookie class needed a couple of extra weeks of offseason workouts before taking the practice field.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s get them ready, let\u2019s physically get them ready to where they can get with the rest of the guys and look like football players a little bit,\u201d Campbell said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the more surprising changes the Detroit Lions made this offseason was the complete removal of rookie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[291781,4992,39966,4993,2130,349,99],"class_list":["post-674287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-detroit-lions-otas","tag-detroit-lions-news","tag-detroit-lions-preseason","tag-detroit-lions-quotes","tag-detroit-lions-training-camp","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}