N.F.L.’s Road to Recovery Grows Longer - Ingles

With no players to talk to, no practices to oversee, Coach Ron Rivera filled the hours of spring and early summer by devising schedules. Over and over, he adjusted his vision for his first Carolina Panthers team, cross-referencing lockout updates with blitz installations.

For each day with no workouts, Rivera penciled in more time for teaching concepts and used his eraser on the offensive playbook. Eight times Rivera made up a calendar only to trash it. The ninth one, refined as the lockout ended in late July just days before his first camp opened, finally stuck.

In all the years Rivera was an N.F.L. apprentice, as a player and an assistant, nobody taught him how to manage a rebuilding team that he was not allowed to meet. The lockout, which barred players from even talking to coaches, upended the regimented routine on which the league thrives. The final victim of the lockout, then, may be the prospect that even the worst team, like 2-14 Carolina last season, can quickly become a contender.

The competitive balance that gives hope to teams like Rivera’s will probably tilt this season toward those like the one he just left: the San Diego Chargers, perennial contenders, whose players know what their coaches are thinking, introducing a predictability that has been absent from the N.F.L. for at least 10 years. The Green Bay Packers, most agree, have a better-than-usual chance of repeating as champions, which was last accomplished by the 2004 New England Patriots. And the difference between the haves and the have-nots, usually so small that even the Cincinnati Bengals — derisively known as the Bungles — won a division title two seasons ago, may never again be as stark.

“As a coach, you go, ‘Wow, we could have really used that time in our situation, with a rookie quarterback,’ ” Rivera said. “There are some teams that will benefit. Us, a team that is young and in flux, we’re going to have to work at it. You can’t go crazy when game-planning; you can’t put stuff in that you would consider putting in for a veteran-type team. You have to find concepts your offensive line and defensive line can handle.

“I think it’s going to affect some teams more than it will affect others. When you look at it, what was the underlying thing that changed it? It’s going to be time.”

Rivera figured that the lockout caused the Panthers to miss 24 practices and 1,200 to 1,600 snaps. The rookie quarterback Cam Newton received his playbook after he was drafted in April, then could not review it with coaches for three months. Newton often looked unprepared in the preseason, so the game plans will almost certainly be scaled back for him this season.

Rookie quarterbacks typically struggle under the best circumstances, and Carolina plays in the tough N.F.C. South. Additional practices would probably not make the Panthers contenders, but their ability to improve quickly has almost certainly been compromised.

They are not alone. Eight teams have coaches holding their first camp, and many others are putting in new systems (like St. Louis with its new offensive coordinator, Josh McDaniels) or integrating new players (like Philadelphia with its free-agent haul, and Tennessee, Minnesota and Seattle with new veteran quarterbacks).

Recent N.F.L. history shows just what might be missing. Last season, more than half of all games were decided by 8 points or less, and almost 67 percent had fourth-quarter margins of 8 points or less . A quarter of all games were decided by 3 points or less.

Not surprisingly, close games led to unexpected results. Three teams that might be the models for the Panthers — Tampa Bay, Kansas City and St. Louis — combined for a 19-game improvement from 2009 to 2010. Five teams that did not make the playoffs in 2009 did so last season. That was the 15th consecutive season in which at least 5 of the 12 playoff teams were new.

Last season was the eighth consecutive season in which at least one team went from worst to first in its division. Thirty-three teams have done so in N.F.L. history, 16 of them since 2000. Rivera knows that from personal experience. He was the defensive coordinator of the Chicago Bears, who were last in 2004 (5-11 in the N.F.C. North) and first in 2005 (11-5).

“When we had this kind of no-off-season program when I played, you had teams repeat because they did have a big advantage,” said Tony Dungy, a former Indianapolis coach, now an analyst for “Football Night in America” on NBC. “The Packers and the Steelers, it seems like you had the same teams that battled it out because of continuity. You aren’t spending half your time in the first week saying, ‘This is what we call this play, and this is what we call for this defense.’ ”

The differences are stark. In Denver, John Fox had his players wear name tags because he had met only a dozen of them before training camp. In St. Louis, the volume of work on offense that would usually take four days to install was stretched over six days, Coach Steve Spagnuolo said. In Tennessee, quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, who signed as a free agent after spending 10 seasons in Seattle, has been behaving like a rookie again.

“I’ve been cruising for the last few years,” he said. “I wouldn’t take my playbook home. During training camp, I had my boat on Lake Washington and I’d go out on the lake with my teammates. Here, I don’t have a chance to do anything social. We’re just studying playbooks. It’s like being in law school. It’s no fun right now.”

It still is in Pittsburgh, which lost the Super Bowl to Green Bay in February. On the first day of camp, the offensive coordinator Bruce Arians said, the Steelers put in 6 or 7 protections, 30 or 40 pass patterns and 8 runs. The next day, they added seven protections and eight runs. By Day 3, they were working on their two-minute offense. Day 4 was spent on the red-zone offense.

“We picked up right where we left off at the Super Bowl,” Arians said. “The new staffs, I feel for them. They’re putting in how to huddle and the snap counts, and we’re running our two-minute offense. It was not a catch-up, just a fine-tune.”

About 25 percent of most rosters change through free agency each season, so teams are used to integrating new players. But even veterans on stable teams have lamented the lack of practice time this year. When receiver Chad Ochocinco was asked if he had absorbed the New England offense after three weeks of work with quarterback Tom Brady, he said that although he knew what he was supposed to do, he was not yet in a comfort zone.

Many believe that one result of so little work is that mistakes that are usually ironed out early will be made for at least the first half of the season, even on stable teams. Offensive linemen will miss blocking assignments and allow sacks. A receiver will run free because a defensive back will not adjust to an audible.

Last year, the touchdown-to-interception ratio in the league was at an unprecedented high, with 1.47 touchdown passes thrown for every interception. That could drop this season, as quarterbacks and receivers scramble to find their timing. Dungy wondered whether some teams enduring the most transition would ever reach their potential this season.

The former coach Dick Vermeil, who guided the Eagles after a strike and also engineered the Rams’ turnaround from doormats to champions, said that the absence of the off-season programs was compounded by the new restrictions on practice time, and that it might have long-term ramifications.

When he took over the Rams in 1997 after seven straight losing seasons, Vermeil ran long, strenuous practices in pads for his first two years. During training camp, he kept rookies after practice to run 20-play scrimmages. By the third year, he tapered off grueling practices because he thought the players knew what to do. The Rams won the Super Bowl in the 1999 season.

Now Vermeil wonders if teams have had enough time to work with their backups — a critical element for championship contenders like the Packers, who won the Super Bowl despite having 15 players on injured reserve.

“Our practices in rebuilding the Rams, under this system today, we would not have gone to the Super Bowl in our third year,” Vermeil said. “There is no way you can get better by working less. You’ve got to swing the club.”

Vermeil agreed that the situation would be better next year, after coaches had time to analyze their practice schedules.

And there may be a silver lining for a few players. Teams will rely heavily on veterans this season, Spagnuolo said, so a deep pool of players who do not make the final cut but who have a month of training camp under their belts will be available for signing after the 2012 draft, potentially improving the quality of the middle and bottom of rosters.

That could be just the boost rebuilding teams need to contend next season. For now, though, the N.F.L. begins this eagerly awaited season hoping that the ugliness of the lockout will not lead to ugly football.

“I’m looking to the left and right — I don’t know who to throw to,” Hasselbeck said of training camp. “It’s all brand new. It’s like the first day of school, but you’re an adult, so nobody is holding your hand.” (source New York Times)