Detroit Lions Training Camp Stories

4. You get to See Things You Otherwise Never Would

My first experience in training camp was eye opening for me.  When I began writing, I was living in San Antonio, Texas, and relied very heavily on the media outlets and a burgeoning social media presence thereof for a majority of my information about the team.  Here I was in training camp, only a few feet away from the players I loved, and I realized how different it was.  There’s simply too much to put into an article or two a day (Believe me, I tried, 3,000 word articles and it still wasn’t enough!).  There’s things you don’t get to see in games, too.  One instance was James Bryant.  Back in 2012, he got a lot of press for moving from boxing back to football, and it was a legit great story.  He was never going to make the team, though.  Why?  In the most basic of agility drills, the dude fell flat on his backside multiple times.  How a boxer had no balance, I’ll never know, but it wasn’t reported in the press.  He ultimately didn’t make the team.

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Another more recent example happened last season.  I know I’m going to catch the usual hell in the comments section due to who it is about, but let’s talk about

.  I’ve mentioned several times, and continue to maintain, that

has a very weak arm.  As a measurables guy, I love numbers, but there’s no reliably consistent measurement for arm strength.  Most of the time you’re stuck just watching the player, watching other players, and comparing apples to oranges.  In training camp 2014, however, Jim Caldwell did something a little different.  Instead of running two QBs and two WRs running different routes, he ran 4 QBs wide with 4 WRs running the same routes.  We were able to see

, Dan 0rlovsky, Kellen Moore, and James Franklin throwing the same pass nearly simultaneously.  The differences in release, velocity, and passing arc were immediately apparent, as was placement and accuracy.  It’s something you will never see in a football game, since there’s never more than one QB on the field, but you can see it during Detroit Lions training camp.

Next: The Camp Superstars