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Saints players say this year's camp wasn't much different than last, when they prepared for a run to the NFC championship game

Thursday, August 16, 2007
By Jimmy Smith

JACKSON, MISS.

It commenced a little more than three weeks ago with the same promise and trepidation as it did in 2006, and concluded Wednesday with many players conceding the results were the same.

Five months from now, when the Saints finish their season with what is hoped to be a first NFL championship, players will look back on their training camp experience at Millsaps College with the same reverence and repulsion they had a year ago when, to a man, they pointed to Coach Sean Payton's first camp as the primary reason for the team's success (the Saints reached the NFC championship game, but New Orleans fell to the Chicago Bears).

"Yep," said tight end Mark Campbell of 2007. "And I'll still curse it. This is a tough camp. No doubt about it. A tough, tough deal. It's hot out here, no question. When we look back on it, we'll say, 'We put in the work.' Part of it to me is feeling like you deserve victory. You deserve to win, and we definitely feel we're doing that right now."

The Saints scheduled nearly 30 practices at Millsaps College this summer, about a week less than last year when logistical problems regarding the post-Katrina renovation and repair of the Superdome necessitated the club play all of its exhibition games on the road, including one in Jackson against the eventual Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts.

But a decision to break camp Wednesday and travel to Cincinnati to work for a day against Saturday night's opponent, the Bengals, left the Saints with 26 practices in Jackson to prepare for the season.

That did not lessen the physical burden of this summer's three-week camp.

"I think it's around the same," second-year tailback Reggie Bush said. "It may be a little bit less demanding, but I don't think much at all. To me, I think it's pretty much the same with the exception that we had an extra preseason game. I think that kind of helped camp go a little faster."

This season, the Saints played the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio, one week into camp. Last year at the same point, they scrimmaged each other in Jackson. The extra trip helped speed up the pace of training camp.

Saints defensive tackle Hollis Thomas, who last year suffered in the heat while attempting to control his asthma through multiple medications (a problem he did not encounter this time), believes from his point of view 2007 might have been less demanding than 2006.

"I wasn't dying down here this year," Thomas said. "I think I just had to get my body acclimated to the Mississippi thing. I was used to practicing in the mountains. It was a total shock to the entire system. I enjoyed it a little more this year than in years past, because I knew what I was supposed to be doing, and I knew what to expect."

For his part, Payton, who praised the totality of the Millsaps experience, scripted his 2007 camp with a pencil, erasing those parts of the plan he thought might be overbearing for his team, mindful that it was best to be flexible rather than rigid.

"I think you've got to trust your gut," Payton said. "The schedules are made up a lot of times in the spring for practices. When you get here, you've got to be spontaneous enough to recognize when you think you might need additional breaks. (On Monday) we took four or five additional breaks when there was really only one on the schedule. The same for pads and not pads. It's having enough balance and communicating with the players 'We're going hard here and we'll get your legs back in time for the game.'

"It's paying attention not so much to what's planned on the itinerary, but paying attention to your team on a daily basis. I think that's important."

Payton knew when to press his team for more and when to pull back. Weather interrupted one practice, whereas last year the Saints lost none to weather-related problems in the month they trained in Jackson.

The only difference: breaking camp a few days earlier to work against the Bengals twice today.

"From a practice standpoint, when you change scenery like we're going to, it can change the tempo a little bit -- and we get a different look," Payton said. "We'll see different personnel, different schemes offensively and defensively -- and I think that's good for the players as well as the coaches. So I think that it helps bring a tempo to your practice that you might other wise struggle to get at this time of the year in training camp."

Players believe it's a good move.

"I think we came out here and worked hard every day and got better as a team," second-year receiver Marques Colston said. "So in that respect, I think we accomplished what we wanted. Working against Cincinnati will be a plus, because it will be more of a game tempo, and it's good to work against another team."

Still, no one would say Camp 2007 was physically less demanding than Camp 2006.

"I would never say that," Campbell said. "I think the difference between this year's training camp and last year's training camp is (last year) we were all new. So there's a lot of different stresses with that, one being trying to see what the coaches want, impressing them obviously. They don't know you from Adam.

"And learning the play book. In our free time now, we know the playbook, so we just kind of freshen up. Last year, there was a lot of studying in between the breaks we had, and that's not much. I wouldn't say it was any easier. The weather was a little nicer at the beginning of camp this year. But man, it feels like just as hard as last year as far as the two-a-days we've had and the physicalness of it."

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