TSN: Training camp preview: Designer Drills

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Training camp preview: Designer drills

By Dennis Dillon - SportingNews

Ice water might not course through the veins of the Giants' tight ends, but it will splash forcefully on their bare chests, necks and faces during training camp if Michael Pope has his way. And he usually does.

Pope is the Giants' tight ends coach, and his imagination knows no bounds when it comes to devising unique practice drills. Ideas come to him while he's studying tape, driving to work, eating dinner or watching a player drink from a Gatorade bucket after practice. That's how the ice water drill was born one hot, humid New York day last summer at the University at Albany.

First, Pope had the tight ends remove their helmets, jerseys and shoes. One at a time, the players had to catch 10-yard passes while Pope stood a few feet away holding a cup of cold water. Just before the ball reached the player, Pope doused him with the chilly liquid. Each player had to catch three passes without bobbling or dropping them -- not even Jeremy Shockey grabbed three in a row -- before he was excused.

The point of the exercise was to focus on concentration and overcoming distractions. In a game, a defender often hits the receiver just as the ball arrives. Without realizing it, the receiver sometimes has a tendency to bat his eyes. It was all the players could do to keep their eyes open when the ice water hit their chests and splashed in their faces.

"We had some laughs with it, but it does have some real value," says Pope. "I said, 'If we ever play in a driving rainstorm, I expect you guys to catch every ball because we rehearsed it.' "

When NFL training camps begin opening in two weeks, players will be subjected to myriad unconventional drills. At Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C., Panthers quarterbacks will stand behind the goal posts and throw passes over the crossbars at garbage cans positioned at various spots on the field. At the Disney Wide World of Sports complex in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., Bucs receivers will work on catching passes within a narrow area near the sideline called "the box." In Carson, Calif., at The Home Depot Center, Chargers defensive linemen will hone their snap reaction time with the use of a football attached to a broomstick. Coaches will try almost any technique if they think it can enhance their players' skills.

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No coach's repertoire runs deeper than Pope's. An NFL assistant since 1983 who is in his second tour with the Giants, Pope is the Grand Pooh-Bah in the fraternal order of unique drill practitioners. He uses more props than a Broadway stagehand. Call him Dr. Strange Drill.

Tight ends usually run shorter routes than wide receivers. They often work in congested areas and rarely get uncontested passes. The goal of Pope's drills is to make his tight ends consistent pass catchers no matter what obstacles they encounter -- and Pope's stock of obstacles during practice has no end.

He'll stand behind them and hook their arms as a pass comes to them. Or he'll have another player stand behind the receiver, reaching around with shields that block his vision until the ball is only 5 yards away. Sometimes he makes the tight ends stand behind a goal post and reach around it to catch a pass, or has them lie on their back and reach up to catch the ball.

"One of the craziest things I guess I've ever done was when I was in Washington," says Pope, who coached the Redskins' tight ends from 1997-99. "I took these swimmers goggles, all different colors, and gave each player a pair. I colored in the bottom part of the goggles with white-out to make their vision even smaller. They had to look through half their eyes and find the ball. We had a pink pair, and the guy who dropped the most passes that day had to wear the pink goggles on his way from the practice field to the locker room, past the media and TV cameras."

Pope, 62, has been concocting unique practice drills since he started coaching in 1970 at Florida State. When something catches his attention in practice or on tape, he tries to come up with a drill that will emphasize that point. Over the years, he has accumulated more than 400 videotapes of his drills. He seldom uses the same drill twice in a season. And he almost always throws the passes himself.

"Quarterbacks are just too accurate," says Pope, a former all-conference quarterback at Lenoir-Rhyne College. "They can't throw bad-ball drills. I don't ever do anything that's a run-of-the-mill catch that they could just make without concentrating. Almost every ball I throw -- and I've thrown thousands over the years -- I throw out of their reach a little bit. Behind them, on their back shoulder, or back hip, or shoelaces."

Three of Pope's most unusual drills:

The shed. A tight end stands inside an equipment shed near the team's practice field at Giants Stadium. He's surrounded by blocking dummies, hand shields and an old lawn mower. Another player is outside, his hand on the door handle. On Pope's command, the door swings open, a surge of sunlight beams through and a pass comes zinging toward the man in the shed. He has a split second to get his hands up and catch the ball. The first time former Giants tight end Dan Campbell tried this drill -- thwack -- the ball struck the facemask of his helmet.

The mule. This one involves three players. The first player squats and braces himself, putting his elbows on his knees. He's the mule. The second player, the receiver, leans over and lies across the back of the mule. A third player grabs the receiver's legs to keep him from tipping over. Pope then throws a pass, making the receiver extend his arms and catch the ball with his fingertips.

"It's hard for a guy to practice laying out for a ball," Pope says. "If you practice that and they fall on their elbow, they can separate their shoulder."

Man in the middle. Four players stand in a square formation 5 yards away from the receiver, who's in the middle. Each of the corner players has a football and is designated by a specific number, color or direction. When Pope calls out a number, color or direction, the receiver must turn and face that man and catch the ball, which is thrown as soon as Pope makes the call.

To make the drill more challenging, Pope changes the designations each time. It might be states for the first player, double-digit odd numbers for the second player and foreign countries for the third player.

"One of the guys got in the middle and Coach Pope said, 'OK, you're Beijing, you're Moscow, you're Nagasaki ...' " Campbell recalls, laughing. "That guy got hit in the back of the head three or four times because he turned the wrong way."

The tight ends have had to catch several passes thrown at a rapid-fire pace and in different locations ("Gatling gun" drill). They've run behind a line of seven or eight teammates, spaced about 2 yards apart, and tried to catch passes that could come through any of the openings ("picket fence" drill). They've had to catch passes after running toward a padded, chain-link fence, turning their backs into the fence and catapulting back toward the ball.

Many of the drills manifest themselves in games, when a tight end has had to make a particularly difficult catch. During an early-season game against the Redskins last year, Shockey ran a "go" route and was covered by linebacker LaVar Arrington, who had perfect position. Kerry Collins threw a pass behind Arrington's back. Shockey reached back and made a one-handed catch for a 22-yard gain. That play was the payoff for a back-shoulder drill the Giants' tight ends practice.

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Any quarterback who plays for Dan Henning performs the "buckets" drill. He stands about 7 yards behind the goal posts and throws over the crossbar toward two trash buckets on the field. The buckets, which are bolted together at their bottoms, giving them an hourglass shape, simulate a receiver. The 10-foot-high crossbar represents the defensive linemen's ability to jump and extend their arms.

"In the NFL today, you just can't throw the ball on a rope because teams play coverages where people pop up in front of your receivers," says Henning, the longtime college and NFL coach who's in his third season as the Panthers' offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. "And the ball has to leave your hand and go at a height over the defensive line. But you just can't lob it out there and have it come down by Newton's Law, you know. You have to throw with arc and pace."

Each quarterback throws up to 30 passes during the drill. The buckets are moved to various spots on the field on different days so that the quarterbacks can practice a variety of passes. One day, it might be a 15-yard out. The next day, it could be a 15-yard in, or a deep post. Sometimes, Henning uses two sets of goal posts, with the second set representing linebackers.

Texans offensive coordinator Chris Palmer also conducts unusual drills with his quarterbacks. Among his props are garbage cans (the passing targets), 7-foot stepladders (defensive linemen), a movable pole that has four arms at different heights and an 18-by-10-foot net.

The net hangs on the crossbar and has several dots of different colors and sizes. A quarterback takes a three-, five- or seven-step drop, Palmer yells out a specific dot -- small yellow, for example -- and the quarterback tries to hit it. The drill works on the quarterback's eyes and accuracy.

"Every once in a while, I'd throw it and hit the target on the first try," says Palmer. "Like a blind squirrel who finds an acorn. Then (the quarterbacks) would get upset because I wouldn't throw it again."

When Richard Mann became an assistant coach with the Browns in the mid-1980s, he taught a technique that helped wide receivers get position on defenders near the sideline. As the receiver ran a route down the sideline, he would use his body to shield or box off the defender to the inside. The quarterback would then throw the pass near the sideline so that either the receiver caught it -- or it went out of bounds. Bill Belichick, then the Browns' head coach, liked the drill so much he suggested a line be put on the practice field, giving the quarterback and receiver a target area.

Mann now is the receivers coach for the Bucs, who use a red line on their practice fields at training camp and at the team's facility in Tampa. The lines run parallel to the sideline and are about halfway between the sideline and the yard-line numbers, making for a long box that is 6 feet wide. The Bucs use it to practice vertical and fade routes. It works only if the receiver can cut off the defender and catch the ball over his shoulder, a technique Mann compares to Shaquille O'Neal trying to catch a lob pass under the basket.

"You put your body against (the defender) and put your arm out there to try to get the pass," he says. "Like ol' Shaq. He puts that big body on them and puts his arm up, which means just throw it over the top. It's the same thing, when you think about it."

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Dolphins special teams coach Keith Armstrong and Cowboys kicking coach Steve Hoffman are two other creative thinkers when it comes to drills. Armstrong uses a volleyball to practice blocking punts. Using a volleyball instead of a football reduces the chances a player will break a finger. A triangular tarp serves as the landing area for players when they try to block the punt.

The player stands about 4 yards away and Armstrong takes three steps before punting the volleyball. The player isn't allowed to take off and extend until Armstrong's second step. Those who violate suffer Charlie Brown-like consequences.

"Sometimes, a rookie will take off as soon as he sees me take my first step," says Armstrong. "So I'll kind of pull a 'Lucy' and pull the ball back. He'll just hang in the air for about 3 seconds, it seems, and then hit the ground."

When Hoffman joined the Cowboys in 1989, he had a welder fabricate collars on goal posts that would allow the uprights to be moved in to where they were about nine feet apart, half the width between regulation uprights. After a kicker uses the narrow posts in practice, he should get a confidence boost in games, when his target is twice as wide. "I don't know how you would measure whether it's made a difference (in accuracy)," says Hoffman, "but I know it makes them concentrate more."

In San Francisco, the 49ers employ martial arts instructor George Chung to work with some of their players. Among Chung's pupils is defensive end Andre Carter, whose sack numbers ballooned from 6 1/2 as a rookie in 2001 to 12 1/2 in 2002 after working with Chung. "I think martial arts have helped me as far as my pass-rush moves, getting around the corner and also against the run," Carter says.

Among the Chargers' unusual practice tools is "the snapper," a football attached to a broomstick. Developed by defensive line coach Wayne Nunnely and assistant equipment manager Chris Smith, it is used to simulate the snap and helps the defensive linemen develop quicker releases.

When it comes to practice drills these days, NFL coaches are thinking outside the box -- and inside the shed