Pete Carroll has to size up the physicality, speed, and toughness of his players. They need to be ready to handle the rigors of an NFL season and withstand the pounding of professional football. However, readiness for an NFL season also involves the mental side and the development of a football IQ. This means the Las Vegas Raiders need to be exposed to a maximum number and range of situations in offseason training. Raiders Wire has more on this:
“About an hour into practice I noticed that I had yet to see either first team face the opposing first team. Which is pretty unusual. Normally it would be first team vs first team, second team vs second team, etc. But today it was always first team vs second team on each side. Initially I thought this was designed to highlight competition. The theory being that you give the second team guys a chance to see what they can do against the first team. And while that may have been a byproduct of the day, that wasn’t the reason behind it.
Practice also went long. I mention that because it happened for basically the same reason.
“’Today we really played it game-like,’ said Pete Carroll. ‘We started with ten minutes left in the third quarter and we played all the way through to the end of the game and somehow the commissioner it to come down to a tie which was great because we wanted to go into OT. And we went into OT and had a couple exchanges in overtime as well. So, we just tried to log as many situations as we could throughout all the time that we had together.’”
Always competing means always being prepared. Pete Carroll is trying to make the Raiders fully prepared for what lies ahead.
This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Pete Carroll works to ensure his Raiders are fully prepared
Reporting by Matt Zemek / Trojans Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
