When it comes to the OTA penalties imposed on the Seahawks, it turns out that the league’s reluctance to share information about what caused the violation applies not only to the media, but also to the Seahawks.
Coach Pete Carroll told Dave “Softy” Mahler of KJR radio on Wednesday that the NFL didn’t tell the Seahawks which day of practice triggered the loss of the two remaining days of voluntary offseason practice. Still, Carroll seems to have an inkling as to what happened.
“There was a little pushing thing that happened on the practice field a week ago. There was an article written about it,” Carroll said. “That did draw their attention.”
It drew ours, too, especially since rough play from youngsters trying to make the team sparked that “little pushing thing.” Carroll concedes that the zeal of the men who are trying to win a job can fuel those problems. “It almost always comes back to the young guys,” Carrol said, explaining that the new players are “overzealous and trying to prove themselves, you know, part of the team and trying to make a play and they grab a guy and pull a guy to the ground.”
Apparently, reports of the “little pushing thing” resulted in a closer look at a subsequent practice. Though that session trigger no concern, a closer look at another practice (presumably the one that spawned the “little pushing thing”) gave rise to the violation.
“We had a visit from one of the officials guys from the Players Association,” Carroll said. “He watched our practice, he thought it was a good practice. But they went back and looked at some tapes of another practice that they thought was over the top. So we’ve asked these guys to compete and bust their tails to get everything we can out of these days, and in their eyes we took it to a physical nature that was too high of a level of intensity.”
Carroll expressed concern that the league and the NFLPA haven’t looked at film from every teams’ practices. He also wishes there were more guidance regarding the things that are prohibited.
“The problem is we have nothing to go by in terms of looking at film,” Carroll said. “There’s no illustrations that has been presented to us that we can see this is the standard.”
The other 31 teams are probably thinking the same thing in the wake of the action taken against the Seahawks. Still, as we surmised earlier in the day (correctly . . . for a change), accounts of altercations at offseason workouts will invite scrutiny. Which means that the Saints will likely be the next team to have its practice films reviewed.