RICHMOND, Va. — We’re off and running with training camp 2014. Day one is in the books after an eventful weather day.
The morning practice got underway about 30 minutes late because of heavy rain that stuck around for most of the practice. The afternoon walk-through was moved indoors to the Convention Center due to storms, and was not open to the public or media.
The wet conditions played a factor in the morning practice performance. Robert Griffin III and the offense weren’t that sharp, as you could imagine.
“Defense did great, offense not so great,” running back Alfred Morris said. “We had a lot of dropped balls today.”
Griffin echoed that, but also had a different outlook on it.
“You start camp, there’s a lot of excitement. Football is back. And then you have a practice like today where the weather plays a huge factor, and you have to kind of block that out,” said the star quarterback. “I think we got better as a football team just having to go through the rough practice.”
Head coach Jay Gruden said they accomplished everything they wanted, and other than some dropped balls, things were fine. He said Griffin was a little “erratic,” but the wet footballs contributed to that.
The new Robert Griffin III
I said yesterday I wouldn’t relive last year and the battles between quarterback and coaches. But Griffin reminded us today that he still might be thinking about it.
“It’s really just a good thing to have two coaches that believe in you,” Griffin said. “Sean and Jay have done a great job. They’ve given me a lot on my shoulders in that quarterback room. I cherish that. You want to be asked to do more. Or at least the bare minimum.”
You don’t have to look into that much to get the meaning.
DeAngelo Hall notices it, too.
“The stress is kind of off, worrying about reps, worrying about a head coach who you don’t really know about – if he likes you or if he doesn’t like you,” Hall said. “From the jump, from the moment Jay [Gruden] came in here, I think Robert kind of knew that Jay wanted him, he wanted to coach him and that he could be special.”
For anybody counting, Griffin wore one black cleat and one white cleat during practice today.
“I call it the yin and the yang, white and black working together,” he said. “We’re all brothers. We’re doing it together.”
Forecast for Friday
Temperatures will be in the 80’s and zero percent chance of precipitation.
See you for the morning practice at 8:30.
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