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There are a few ways of looking at the Jets’ training camp schedule this year in Florham Park.
The practices start at 2:20.
It will be give fans plenty of time to get there, as opposed to 10 am practices.
But the flip-side is that fans will be leaving during rush hour to drive home on busy New Jersey highways.
Obviously Todd Bowles can’t concern himself with fans being in the rush hour. It’s not that big of a deal in the big football picture.
I think one of the reasons why he’s practicing at 2:20 is that it’s right in the middle of the afternoon, so it will help with conditioning.
One reason some teams practice in the morning is due to the heat. But the heat can obviously be great for conditioning, so since you are only allowed one practice a day due to the CBA rules, you might has well make it during a hot part of the day, and use it as a conditioning tool as well.
Another new wrinkle – only six practices will be open to the general public.
Another six will be open to people who win a lottery for tickets to those practices.
One reason for this is limited space for fans on certain practice fields. They sometimes need to rotate certain practices to fields with limited fans sections. They rotate practice fields so they don’t wear them out.
A couple other factors.
The Jets are installing a lot of new stuff with a first-year staff. By limiting the number of open practices that anybody can attend, you cut down on people in the crowd who might be from other teams. If you don’t think other teams send people to open practice you are kidding yourselves.
Another factor is to cut down on the attendance of certain effusive fans, who are known for their catcalls towards players, who tend to show up every day. There were some people out of control in recent years. There was a guy destroying Stephen Hill. That isn’t fair to the players. Just because practices are open, doesn’t mean you should treat players like dart boards.
In so many ways, it’s easier for the Jets to train in Cortland. The logistics to hold a camp are smoother. You have the dorms for the players to sleep not far from the practice field. In Florham Park, they will have to put players up in a nearby hotel and bus them there.
And honestly, the Jets’ training complex wasn’t really built to hold open practices.
Hey, this should work out just fine for the Jets this summer, but one reason they have all these new rules for camp are the challenges of training in Florham Park.
But I don’t blame Bowles and Mike Maccagnan for wanting to training in Florham Park this year. As first-year guys, it’s much easier for them to operate out of their home base compared to moving the whole operation four hours away to Central New York. Also, they could be making a lot of personnel moves as first-year guys, and it’s much easier to fly players in and out of nearby Newark Airport compared to the airport situation by Cortland (Syracuse – 45 minutes away with limited flights).
July 9, 2015
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