As soon as upon a time, most NFL groups held their coaching camps away from house.
However within the 2000s, groups started trending away from touring for camp. In 2000, 21 of the league’s 31 groups (68%) went out of city for his or her summer season apply periods. By 2021 — the season after each crew held coaching camp at their apply services as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic — simply six of 32 groups (19%) held coaching camp away from house.
In 2024, that quantity is as much as eight. Beginning this week, the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs will as soon as once more maintain camp at Missouri Western State College in St. Joseph. The Buffalo Payments, Dallas Cowboys, Indianapolis Colts, Las Vegas Raiders, Los Angeles Rams, New Orleans Saints and Pittsburgh Steelers may even be on the highway.
The Chiefs proceed to do it for a easy cause: as a result of that’s how head coach Andy Reid likes it.
“It’s a time for camaraderie — and bringing issues collectively as a crew,” Reid mentioned of the expertise when camp returned to St. Joseph in 2021. “It’s arduous work. There’s no shortcuts, clearly. We’re going to attempt to cowl all the things we probably can. There’s this focus of soccer that you just absorb right here. You’re sleeping in a dorm, you’re consuming in a dorm and all that. You’re right here — and it’s soccer 24/7, proper now. That’s the way it works.”
A long time in the past, it was additionally widespread for groups to carry joint practices with different franchises throughout camp. However as groups began staying house — as an alternative of touring to cooler areas of the nation, the place different organizations have been holding their camps close by — it began taking place much less usually. Extra just lately, nevertheless, groups have once more begun scheduling joint practices — largely throughout highway journeys for preseason video games. In 2024, 30 groups will take part in 22 such periods.
However that is one more space the place the Chiefs are bucking present considering. They (and the Raiders) are planning no camp practices with one other crew.
“I’ve simply by no means been that large on that,” Reid defined to reporters in 2014. “A variety of groups do it. A variety of profitable groups do it. [But] I actually don’t wish to give anyone something that I don’t have to present.”
A 12 months later, Reid offered a bit of extra element.
“In at the moment’s world, with expertise, there’s not plenty of secrets and techniques,” mentioned Reid, per Fox Sports activities. “You could have your teaching factors, instructing factors — you attempt to train on the sphere — and I actually don’t need anybody listening to that. That’s my very own private feeling. As a lot as I can hold in-house in at the moment’s world, I wish to do.”
Apart from… so far as Reid is anxious, preseason video games give him all the things he might get from a joint apply.
“One of many advantages of getting preseason video games is you get to see these guys play, in entrance of a crowd, [when] the lights are on,” mentioned Reid. “It’s one other step in addition to apply.”
So so long as exhibition matchups exist, Reid will in all probability stay against joint practices — it doesn’t matter what different groups do.
