The fast and furious trend of getting young players into the swing of the NFL was in full effect yesterday as the Ravens rookies hit the field at the Under Armour Performance Center in Owings Mills.
Over 40 players took the practice field for the first time before the eyes of the media including several Ravens draft picks, rookie free agents and tryout players.
The tempo was good, as John Harbaugh pointed out following practice, and he was highly impressed with just how quickly the youngsters picked up on the team’s offensive and defensive schemes.
“Everybody understands their different situation,” Harbaugh said, referencing his message to the team before taking the field. “No two players are ever in the same exact situation. Anywhere from a first-round pick to a tryout guy is different. It’s all the same in the sense [that] we’re all going out there to practice together.
“We tell them that this is the Ravens for the next two days, and this is who we are. We’re practicing together, and we’re a team.”
Nothing was left off the table for the NFL hopefuls as the coaching staff threw everything but the kitchen sink at them. There is however, a method to their madness.
“Actually, you can get a pretty good gauge on the football IQ part of it – the processing part of it – because there’s a lot of mental stuff that we throw at them,” related Harbaugh. “That’s a big part of what we’re doing, I think that’s part of it. There’s a teaching method to it, and you want to throw a lot of stuff at guys and see how much they can grasp and how much they understand and see where they’re at going forward.
“You can’t do that if you’re not testing them on the field and in the walk-throughs and things like that.”
With the Ravens entering their fourth week of its offseason program, the pace will pick up even more as the team expects to have between 80 and 90 players in camp.
Two of those players Harbaugh & Co. are looking forward to getting back on the field are third-round pick DE Bronson Kaufusi and fourth-round pick RB Kenneth Dixon.
“No, Bronson tweaked his back a little bit yesterday,” quipped Harbaugh. “He was out here yesterday practicing, did a good job, and strained his lower back a little. So, he’s not practicing today. We might have five, six, seven guys who had one thing or another.
“We had a young man break his foot yesterday – one of the tryout guys, a fullback from Michigan State. It’s just a fluke thing. Stuff happens as far as that goes.”
Dixon’s absence was expected as the former Louisiana Tech running back is recovering from a nagging hamstring injury.
“He has a hamstring,” added Harbs. “He had that right away coming in. I guess he hurt his hamstring at his pro day a little bit.”
Rookie mini camp is exactly that, rookie mini camp. Nothing spectacular but serves as an important cog in determining how far the rookies have come in such a little bit of time.
Not to mention, it’s one step closer to training camp…
Follow me on Twitter @sportguyRSR
