TheOak

While perusing through some of the emails that made their way through the pipeline over the past few days to make sure I hadn’t missed anything interesting, I realized that I’d missed something interesting.
Last week, in the aftermath of a first-day-of-OTAs fight between Buccaneers defensive tackle Akeem Spence and center Jeremy Zuttah, Roy Cummings of the Tampa Tribune said on 98.7 The Fan that contact was indeed occurring at the team’s offseason practices.
“It’s football practice, without pads,” Cummings said. “I’ll tell you what, Greg Schiano is right on the border of getting investigated and possibly — I don’t know if they would fine him, I don’t know what the penalty is — but these guys are out there, they’re hitting. . . . There’s no pads on, but I’m telling you, the linemen, these guys are hitting. People are going down on the ground. And it’s interesting. I mean, most of this was second- and third-team guys, it wasn’t the front-line guys. So there’s a little bit of what Jon Gruden used to call ‘practice etiquette’ that I think has to be learned here, but they’re going at it pretty good.”
Cummings pointed to the Zuttah-Spence fight, and said it was a 22-man “melee” that “went on for a while” — all due to the fact that there was contact between the linemen.
“I can’t imagine it’s being ordered, I think it’s just guys being a little overzealous, trying to earn a spot,” Cummings added. “And that’s part of what this part of the season is about.”
It is, but it isn’t. Contact has been prohibited, at least on paper, since the no-pads offseason practices began. In the aftermath of the 2011 labor deal, contact was supposed to truly be eradicated from OTAs, thanks to beefed-up penalties that include the loss of practice time and fines for head coaches.
We don’t know whether contact continued over the past week or so, but it’s the kind of thing that coaches should have ensured wouldn’t occur before the sessions began — and that they should have immediately nipped in the bud. Young players always will want to prove themselves; it’s on the coaches to ensure that they know the limits before they’re put in position to test them.


Reporter says there’s contact at Buccaneers’ OTA sessions | ProFootballTalk

saintsfan403

Anyone else get the feeling that if it was us we would be in the middle of contact-gate or something retarded?

QBREES9

LOL.

vpheughan

More like a very "clever" Bucs cOnTAct Gate!! Pretty good huh? I should "report" for Yahoo!!!! LOL

TheOak

5 game suspension for Shiano for violating the leagues No Touching policy.

Danno

I heard Josh Freeman started whining complaining and crying immediately.

homerj07

Hey go for it. Injure your players. Works for me

vpheughan

Practice that hitting the QB when he takes a knee!!

SaintsBro

Schiano seems like just the type of dumb S.O.B. who would do something like this, of course the league will probably let him get away with it since he's not named Sean Payton....Tell you what though, I'm not surprised to hear this...ever since he got there in Tampa, everything about this guy suggests to me "not ready for the big leagues" or "green coach just promoted from small college" or "not ready for prime time," "can't take the bright lights" etc. There is a lot of stuff from college ball that doesn't translate to pro, attitudes, work ethic, ways of doing things, and there is a lot of stuff from the college game that the pros don't mess with, mainly because it has to do with class and attitude and professionalism.... it's a way of saying that stuff is college ball over there, and THIS is the professional game -- like the way that Payton used the phrase "our game" back in his bounty statements, when talking about NFL football in general....it's class and attitude and professionalism, the classic "act like you've been there before" attitude....a lot of what I see from this Schiano guy indicates to me that he doesn't "get it" that way...