The Archive: Buddy Ryan's hell of a first training camp

(This story was originally published in August of 1986.)

A snapshot from what most Eagles are calling their toughest training camp:

The receiver, wearing white, is running an out pattern. The defender, wearing green, is playing about 5 yards off.

The receiver cuts.

The ball is in the air.

The defender hesitates ever so slightly, then comes up and buries the receiver. The ball pops loose.

Hushed words follow.

"You all right, man?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

The receiver obviously did not want to get hit. It was just as obvious that the defensive back did not want to hit him. But there it was anyway, the collision of teammates that neither of them wanted.

Off in the background, standing deep in the secondary, was Buddy Ryan. The collision was for his benefit, no one else's. That is clear; that is understood. Joe Woolley, the Eagles' director of player personnel, sums up the feeling nicely:

"Right now," he said, "everybody's afraid not to make the hit."

Welcome to Camp Buddy.

*

How tough is it?

"It's the toughest camp I've ever been to," said Reggie White, defensive tackle and licensed Baptist minister. "I find myself thinking that Scripture talks about endurance. Jesus endured, and if he can do it, I can do it. He went through a far worse situation."

The question of toughness has filled the air this week in the fun and sun capital of Chester County. It has brought out large, almost unprecedented crowds to watch the Eagles train.

After the first day, the people who came to see blood and guts and defensive ends vomiting on the grass were largely disappointed. But those who were looking for about 45 minutes of full contact a day plus several other entertaining drills left satisfied.

How tough is it?

Ryan looks at you as if you have three heads when you ask that question. Annoyed, he will tell you this is the way camp has been wherever he has coached. He does not think his way is especially tough at all.

His players tend to disagree.

"It's probably as tough as Dick Vermeil's first camp," said cornerback Herm Edwards. "It's a situation where he's trying to weed out guys, see who can hang the toughest."

"I'll tell you what I've gotten out of this so far - a set of worn-out legs that are sore as hell," Mike Quick said.

"It's tough - tough with a capital T and a big exclamation point," said Ken Reeves, the second-year offensive tackle, whose only previous training camp was last year under Marion Campbell.

The practices are no longer this year. Including special teams work, they run from about 9:10 to 11:45 in the morning, and from about 2:40 to 5:00 in the afternoon.

At 9:20 a.m. yesterday, players were standing around in knots of two or three, discussing whatever. Special teams guys were on the field, walking through another formation. Several assistant coaches were conferring, talking about a new wrinkle for the afternoon practice.

Then Buddy Ryan blew his whistle, the only whistle on the field. Previously, camps here were ruled by an air horn. One of the equipment managers would sound it at specified intervals and the players would move on to their next period of drills.

But here, it is just the whistle, the one whistle. It starts practice, it moves players to the next drill, it stops practice. An insider tells the running joke. "This camp," he said, "is on BST - Buddy Standard Time."

*

How tough is it?

"I don't think it's any tougher than any other camp I've ever been to," Joe Woolley said.

Woolley is a good person to speak on the subject. He is a newcomer to Ryan and his ways. He also is someone who has coached under a different NFL system, that of Bum Phillips. He is a detached insider.

"The only difference in this camp," Woolley said, "is that we do more conditioning work early in practice. They get tired earlier.

"Usually guys pace themselves and kind of prepare themselves for the conditioning work at the end of practice. Here, we do a lot of it early."

There are 15 minutes of calisthenics at the beginning of practice, followed by 15 minutes of agility work that is mostly running - running backwards, sideways, crossing over.

Because running is integral to football, it is integral to many of the drills during the next hour or so of practice. Sometimes there is more running after that. As a consequence, everyone is tired when the hitting starts. And after about 20 minutes of hitting, there are a variety of wind sprints - one variation is called "Whoa's and Go's" - to close out the session.

The key to this is that Ryan tires out the players before the hitting starts.

"I think that's a good policy," Woolley said. "Now, we can see if a guy can think when he's tired. You're tired in the ballgame."

It is a system that has the players trudging extra slowly up the hill to the locker rooms after practice. But it also is a system the players seem to understand.

"You run, then you're warm," Edwards said. "And you'll be in better condition now so that you'll be able to hit in the fourth quarter. The other way, sometimes you're so tired in the fourth quarter that you can't hit anybody, and that's when you get hurt."

Said Quick: "When you do all of that running before you get into the actual football, I think that leaves the concentration level not as high as it might be if you went right into the football stuff. Doing it like that, it helps you when you get in a tight situation and you are tired. In a game, no matter how tired you are, you've still got to play."

The guys who seem to be doing more running this year than ever before are the linemen. Three left guards have left camp, although none of the departures can be tied directly to the hard work. The dehydration problems suffered by Kevin Allen, last year's No. 1 pick, are a different story.

"I'm just trying to take it day by day," Reeves said. He currently is out with a pulled hamstring.

"Any time you run," Reeves said, "you get tired. Then, when you're tired, you start hitting. And any time you do something when you're exhausted, pretty winded, well, the hitting's about the same. But it's just harder to hit when you're tired."

That seems to be the consensus. There probably is more hitting this year than last, but not an outrageous amount more. The difference is the extra running. To the players, it makes the hitting seem worse.

The memory of the first day does not help, either. It was last Friday, and it was brutal. The temperature was 93 degrees. The nutcracker drill in the morning and the full contact in the afternoon were murderous for a first day. It got everyone's attention.

Since then?

"On the tough side of normal," Woolley said.

"The tough side of normal? No," Reeves said. "We worked hard last year, too. I don't know. I don't try to understand these things. I just try to do what I'm told."

"For me, it's 100 percent tougher than last year," Quick said, laughing.

He was a contract holdout all last summer. Then he went out and made All-Pro again, catching 73 passes for 1,247 yards. The man has proven he does not need training camp to get ready. He especially does not need a training camp like this one.

"You try to get used to their way of doing things and get that much out of it," he said. "I don't know what to expect out of them, and they don't know what to expect out of me. They're different people. We use this to get used to each other."

Quick, though, has trouble getting accustomed to all the hitting.

"At this level," he said, "I don't think there's a question of whether or not you'll hit somebody. I don't think we have to go that far with it, trying to see who can hit and who cannot. Hell, everybody on this team will hit you.

"But other people see it other ways," Quick said. "We have to do it the way that they expect you to do it."

*

Buddy Ryan wears sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, so you cannot always tell what he is staring at. He stays far enough away from the action that he gets a wide-angle look at everything. But make no mistake - every player believes that the eyes are on him.

Standing there, arms folded in front of him, Ryan makes his players uneasy. They know they are all unproven in his eyes, and they know he admires two things: smarts and toughness. So they desperately try to be in the right place, and they desperately try to prove they are tough.

So, when the receiver runs an out pattern, and the ball is in the air, you know what the defensive back is going to do.

You know he's afraid not to.