ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — The Kansas City Chiefs had 85 players on the field Saturday afternoon for their first full practice of training camp and unlike the rest of their stay in St. Joseph, Mo., this 90-minute workout was a breeze. Matters will not take on a physical energy until Monday’s first practice in full pads.
The labor agreement between the owners and players limits what teams can do in training camp, and that’s led to some coaches removing shoulder pads completely from the practice equation.
Not Andy Reid. The Chiefs’ head coach was described as “old school” by a couple of his veteran players, but they have no problem with practices that are physical and generally include some “live” plays that go off at close to full throttle.
“I believe that the game is still blocking and tackling,” Reid said as his 18th NFL camp opened on Saturday at Missouri Western State University. “We’re going to get out there and work. Nothing comes easy if you’re going to win the Lombardi Trophy. They just don’t give those away. You have to go earn that thing and that’s a tough thing to do. No matter how you cut it – you have to be mentally prepared to do it, so this is the way you do business here and go about it.”
Inside linebacker Derrick Johnson has played for five different head coaches in his 12 seasons with the Chiefs (Dick Vermeil, Herm Edwards, Todd Haley, Romeo Crennel and Reid). Only those practices conducted by Vermeil matched the physicality of the Kansas City camps under Reid, even with the labor restrictions.
“We had a couple of days with coach Vermeil where we had two padded practices in one day and going at it hard,” said Johnson. “He was old school, with practices that were 2 1/2-3 hours long. It’s not a day at the beach with coach Reid’s camps, but it’s not as hard as those.”
Around the NFL, the Chiefs under Reid are known as one of the few teams that uses full pads and has live contact during camp. Johnson said when he sees other NFL players, he does not talk about how his team compares to others.
“If somebody tells me they aren’t practicing as hard as we do, I may think something different on the field,” said Johnson. “I know what Andy Reid is looking for from us as players. He makes that clear. He runs a hard camp. His expectations are very high.”
Reid said he’s not working to earn the trophy for most physical camp.
“I’m sure there are ones that are equal or tougher, but the main thing is that we get ourselves right and ready to play,” said Reid. “This isn’t the competition of the toughest camp or anything like that.”
And, Reid said he’s only giving the players what they asked for when he arrived at Arrowhead Stadium in 2013.
“When I got here four years ago, they said, ‘You just tell us what you want to do and we’re going to do it,'” Reid said. “Honestly, that’s been the attitude since I’ve been here. I’ve never been worried one bit about this group working and coming in here thinking it will be any different.”
