Mini Camp Skills Training: Fill & Download for Free

Am I going back in time, taking the Patriots back to the mid/late 60’s and having them face the Packers with their equipment? Or am I bringing the Packers up to today and giving them the benefit of today’s gear?That part is irrelevant, honestly. Players in the 60’s were much smaller. They didn’t play football year round. Many guys had second jobs in the offseason. Training was different. There is no way to compare that to today’s players who are training all year, who have mini-camps through the spring, who come to training camp in football season shape for the most part (as opposed to the 60’s when guys came to camp TO get in shape).Players today have developed skills that players then didn’t know existed. It’s the evolution of the game.The Pats would win handily.

Back when I served my military conscription we had a total idiot in our company. I repeat, a complete imbecile.Two months into our basic military training course of muscle building and mental disciplining, we were finally prepared and ready to try out live weapons. Our first round of live firing a week ago already gave us a taste of war.This time round, we were made to camp under a shelter nearly half a kilometer away from the bomb site. The waiting process bored us to no end. Just as some of the recruits started joking about how they overdid safety, a shock wave rocked through our bodies. The first five trainees sent over to be tested apparently just demonstrated their destructive skills.Since it was five recruits per wave, we could count the total number of frags detonated from the blasts. What was shocking was that the failure rate of explosives turned out to be extremely high! Around lunch time, our bomb expert technicians arrived to plant C4s to blow away the remaining compromised grenades to maintain general safety.You could tell it was a C4 when the shock wave rippled differently. At the kind of loudness we were dealing with, it is no longer the volume on the battlefield that you listen to deduce the source, but the tremor pattern.Finally, it was the turn for the two clowns of the company to perform. Me, and the other clown, less eccentric than me but bolder. The rest of my platoon cheered loudly and sarcastically as we were mobilized into the parade of losers.We came in view of an open field where the soil had been ploughed by countless shrapnel after a day of detonation. Craters formed at the epicenters where what smelt like barbecued earthworms unearthed from.I took a deep breath to recall the drill. Removal of safety pin; swing; shout ‘Grenade!’ and finally throw. The sheer weight of the grenade tore my muscles a little as I swung it. My instructing officer immediately hugged me and suplexed me to the Earth with him behind the ledge we threw over in order to duck for cover. (It was meant to be part of the drill.)After an unnerving five seconds, my grenade blew up. My officer congratulated me on my mini achievement as I removed my ear plugs and I withdrew from the scene victorious. However, my fellow clown did not march back proudly with me. What did he do to get screwed again this time?Fast forward to the next day.‘Peng Peng, what did Clement shout as he was throwing the grenade?’ my sergeant major demanded. ‘I want an honest answer!’‘LET’S GO PIKACHU!’Needless to say, this guy was charged and put on confinement for the next few weeks.

Baseball may be America’s pastime, but football is America’s obsession. And as such, the media has begun to make football a 12 month game. The things haven’t really changed tremendously over time,what’s changed is the way things are covered.College season ends with the national championship game in January. NFL football continues until February. After the Super Bowl, talk soon goes the the NFL Scouting Combine. What used to be just a little known occurrence is now a major deal, getting it’s own week on the NFL Network. That happens in late February/early March. Soon after the combine, the league year restarts with teams designating players for franchise or transition and a week or so later the free agency period begins. Free agency starts hot and then cools but it begins in mid-March. Also along this time frame, college players will have Pro-Days at their schools. It is a chance for the guys who went to the combine to further exhibit their talents in a more comfortable environment and a chance for guys who weren’t invited to the combine to show their skills. Then we have the NFL schedule release in mid-April and the draft at the end of April. May is filled with OTA’s and mini-camps. June is dead month for the NFL. Not much happens. Watch the NBA Finals and baseball. Then training camps open in mid to late July and it’s go time.So out of the year, you only get about a one month reprieve from football all the time…But to more specifically answer your question, draft talk begins about a week or two after the college national championship. You’ll get the first round of mock drafts showing up around that time, as you’ll hear of who is coming out early and who is remaining for a senior season. As well, you’ll get the college “all-star” games, the Senior Bowl and the East-West Shrine game and the NFLPA game. Because these are all players eligible for the draft, a lot of focus is heaped on these games and the players in them. That ramps up the draft talk. After the NFL season ends, college players are preparing for the combine and their pro days, which is covered tremendously. The Combine is a week-long process now. Pro days are highly publicized. All of this comes with the tweaking and re-tweaking of mock draft boards. You’ll tire of seeing Kiper and McShay break down and over -analyze every nose hair of every player in the draft.Couple ALL of that with the fact that the draft itself IS more days. Used to be 2 days, now it’s three. And it’s all on TV for mind-numbing hours upon hours. I love football. I don’t love all the draft hype.