Cleveland Browns quarterback Joe Flacco went full “back in my day” recently when asked about young players and the NFL practice schedule.
The league’s practice schedule has no doubt become less grueling over the years, and Flacco has seen that change first hand over his 17-year career.
But there is still a major adjustment for new players coming into the NFL from college, something Flacco touched on.
“Even when it got easier in like 2011, I think, everybody that was playing at that point had been through two-a-days at some point in their life,” Flacco explained, per Yahoo Sports’ Jori Epstein. “Guys coming into the NFL now have never done it. They’ve never done it.
“We’re out there for an hour and 15 minutes and guys think it’s hard,” Flacco added. “Our OTAs were two hours, for sure.
Two-a-day practices in the NFL were outlawed as part of the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement, and college football wiped them out in 2017.
The kids these days will never know the struggle of what was once a much more strenuous practice schedule.
The sweeping changes the league has made in regard to practice schedules over the past few decades is definitely a benefit to the players, who have a better chance of staying healthy during the offseason and having more gas in the tank late in the regular season.
But it has also led some to wonder if that is a cause of teams getting off to slow starts more often, although there can be several factors that play into that.
If there’s one thing younger and older players can agree on, it’s that having a less grueling practice schedule is a good thing, although the old heads like Flacco won’t let the youngsters forget just how much better they have it.
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