2-A-Day Finale

Today marks Father's Day and, perhaps more importantly, the last 2-a-day of the 2007 Stamps camp. I think at this point everyone is ready for a break, myself included. It will be nice to finally get into a normal 1-a-day schedule after spending so much time at the stadium everyday. I don't know what I'll do with all my newfound free time. I should probably start looking for an apartment and a mode of transportation.

The morning started out the same as it has every 2-a-day for the past 2 weeks. Grab a feeble breakfast before 7:00AM and then be out for practice at 7:50AM. The head coach abridged practice slightly thanks to the constant rain we seem to get here in Calgary. Rain showed up in the forecast every single day for the past 2 weeks! I had a very good practice this morning and the defensive line coach seemed rather pleased with me. Practice consisted of a walkthrough, an awful individual period (drills and such) and 3 team periods with conditioning and stretching to follow. We were done in an hour and 45 minutes. Can't complain about that.

An excessively long break and meetings followed practice. We finally ate around 12:30PM and were turned loose to enjoy a dead 90 minutes. Not enough time to go home thanks to the 25 minute walk, but just a bit too long to sit around in the locker room doing nothing. I don't know how they manage to do that to us during every break. It has to be intentional... probably to keep us from getting out of hand. The rookies also received their payment for the week. We don't get real checks until after the final cuts, which I understand, and they pay for room & board, but still.

The second practice today was even shorter than the first. Still there was a great grumbling amongst the veterans, as the second practice of the last 2-a-day is traditionally canceled. Not so this year for whatever reason. The coaching staff refused to throw us a bone all camp, so I wasn't particularly surprised... it sounded too good to be true from the start. As a result of this, the second rain-drenched practice was not nearly as productive as the first. The defensive line played rather poorly and our coach was rather incensed to say the least. I played decently at best, but nowhere near where I'd like to be. There is always tomorrow though... for most of us.

Today could be the end of the line for a lot of players. With 2-a-days over the team will no longer supply us with meals (except semi-breakfast). This means that the team now has to pay the rookies a per diem so we can feed ourselves. The team doubtlessly wants to pay this per diem, whatever it might be, to as few men as possible (and rightly so). I expect to see a lot of empty lockers tomorrow morning.