OTAs Begin Monday
The journey to the 2010 NFL season will be officially underway for the Chiefs starting Monday as the team beings its OTA practices also known as Organized Team Activities. We’ve gone over what these are before but in short they are practices in shorts and helmets.Though the are not allowed to be mandatory, the Chiefs coaching staff expects all of their players to be in attendance.
As far as I can tell, everyone should be there save guard Brian Waters and OLB Mike Vrabel. Both men prefer to work on their own and normally only attend mandatory practices. While it would be nice to have leadership on display for the young guys, when you have been around as long as Waters and Vrabel you kind of earn the right to do things your own way. Those are to guys the coaching staff trusts will be prepared come training camp.
There should be a lot of interesting news coming out of OTAs. While this is the 2nd season of practices under head coach Todd Haley, the Chiefs made some major coaching changes last offseason by bringing in offensive coordinator Charlie Weis and defensive coordinator, Romeo Crennel. The Chiefs should get right to work on installing new players and schemes on both sides of the football.
The other thing to look out for is who is lining up where and when. The coaches will tell you lineups don’t matter at this point and to some degree they don’t, but you can believe that when Matt Cassel is on the field, Dwayne Bowe and Chris Chambes figure to be out there as well. The Chiefs don’t have the luxury of having Bowe catch passes from Brodie Croyle half the offseason. They need their projected starters getting as much work with each other as possible.
Still, there could be some position battles going on as there are plenty of starting spots that could be up for grabs, especially at LB. Look for guys like Andy Studebaker, Jovan Belcher and Cameron Sheffield to make their cases for playing time.
We’ll have all the news coming out of OTAs for you next week. To get you ramped up (if you aren’t already) check out this preview from Josh Looney over at KC Chiefs.com.