Bell Plans On Returning Now?

[BFritz21]

(10-29-2018, 11:42 PM)Captain Obvious Wrote: Wow, way to butcher what I said. I never said it makes or breaks a player's season. Preseason games do get a player into shape more than running and cutting on his own could. I thought you had to be playing stupid, but I see you really are this stupid now. When you're running and cutting on your own, you don't have 250 pound people running after you trying to knock you down. The reason the players want to shorten it is because it's preseason and the games don't mean anything and they're still risking their careers for meaningless games. That's the reason you dolt. Let me go back to basics and teach you football 101. 

How does preseason get a player into shape more?  Because players are chasing him?  You're not too bright.

(10-29-2018, 11:52 PM)Dill Wrote: Gotta side with the Captain on this one.

Pounding the ball, looking for that break upfield while dodging or running over top athletes trying to take you down, is rather different from "running and cutting" in the park an hour before lunch--especially when deep in the 4th quarter, the game is on the line, and your calves and hands have been stamped on in pile after pile and your ankle has just been re-taped.  Where's the adrenaline when practicing alone? How can running through tires and bumping dummies provide the route timing needed to catch passes on the run, or wait for a block to develop and then hit the hole full burst?  How does your field vision develop in the gym?

Everyone who has played football or basketball or wrestled or ran track knows this. The intense competition pushes you to a different level.

That might make sense, except starters don't play into the fourth quarter in any game and teams aren't going to risk anything big with their star players.  

Yes, it might be different than practice, but these guys have been playing football for how many years?  10?  15?  You really think they need a meaningless preseason game to get into season mode and get their blood going?

It might be valuable for some, but some players can just come in and turn it on.  Take last year, in the first game, he only 32 yards, but they also only gave him 10 carries, but then he had 87 against the Vikings, a top five rushing defense (granted only 3.2 YPC), 4.1 against the Bears and Ravens, both of whom were in the top half of the league in defensive YPCA, and Bell finished in the top ten in YPC among players with at least 200 carries and top 5 in players with 250 carries.  

As far as your hit the hole, route timing, all that, some players, especially pros, don't need that practice because they've been doing it their entire lives.  I played one down of receiver my entire life, which was my freshmen year and caught a touchdown passes, so, my sophomore year, the day of the wreck, they decided to play me at receiver too (I had only been a DB), and we had a practice that morning and I was running routes and catching passes from our QB like we were Division I college players, and it was just because I had that ability in me, even though I had never done it before.  But you think Bell, who has been doing this all his life, can't come in and flip a switch?

(10-30-2018, 12:46 AM)Captain Obvious Wrote: Finally someone with some sense. If just running and cutting by yourself, gets you into football shape like Brad thinks, team practices wouldn't be as important. Most everyone that's already proved their worth would just skip all preseason games and stay at home and start running and cutting by themselves.

Teams practice to get in rhythm and to get in sync with each other, as well as to get plays down, which a running back really doesn't need because he's not really running routes with the QB which he would need to be in rhythm with him and he's not on the line blocking, so he doesn't need to be in sync with his other linemen on blocking schemes.  He's not on defense, so he really wouldn't need to know where his teammates would be or what they could do, or how they'd be running schemes and things, so preseason is probably the least important for running backs and kickers.