A week from Monday, Raiders head coach Jon Gruden will get to see his players in pads for the first time this season. In Gruden’s football-centric world, that’s about the best gift he can receive for his 57th birthday that day. Gruden only recently met some of the players he and general manager Mike Mayock
Happy birthday to Raiders head coach Jon Gruden; padded practices are on the horizon
Time to see how everyone looks from going from shorts to pads. Everyone is great in shorts. Separation starts when they start hitting.
It’ll be interesting to see how this unfolds, not so much in a personnel sense, but from a physical distancing perspective. How much push between units. If it’s same, like last and previous seasons, then nothing has changed. If the contact is less, then there is a level of keeping everyone safe and healthy as possible.
Cork, are practice squads expanded? I’ve read conflicting stories on this. If there is less contact in padded sessions, how are they going to evaluate personnel? And, with the NFL going to point of care testing (which is less reliable, but have a result in 15 minutes), does that mean everyday testing.? My wife, who is an ER doc, said everyday testing provides little to no clinical value because of the high false positive/false negative rates.
Yes, the practice squads have been increased to 16 after they had bumped up from 10 to 12 earlier. As an aside, teams are permitted to protect four players each week from being signed off their practice squads by other teams. Remember, that’s how the Raiders ended up with tight end Darren Waller, they signed him off the Ravens’ practice squad.
That’s interesting about what your wife said, David. It makes it even more egregious that these pro teams in all sports are using up so many tests when there aren’t enough available for everyone in this country right now.