| | By Doug Brien
Special to ESPN.com
Editor's note: What is life in an NFL training camp like? Kicker Doug Brien takes you inside the camp of the New Orleans Saints with his weekday diary for ESPN.com.
Wednesday, Aug. 9
THIBODAUX, La. -- The heat is back. For two weeks the weather has been more reasonable than the first week when temperatures soared into the 100s. Additionally, we were blessed with cloud cover. But today, the temperature climbed back into the 100s without a cloud in the sky. Bottom line: it was hot. Two players had IVs after practice to get fluid back into their body and many of the players with the flu were also hurting. Jared Tomich has had the flu for over a week and not missed a single practice. This morning he threw up several times. He told me the heat made him delirious during the walk-through in the beginning of practice -- not a good sign of things to come. But he made it through the entire practice. I play with some tough guys and Jared is definitely one of them.
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| Brien |
Today a reporter asked me about how I felt about not kicking off this season. I told him that I am fine with it. It is strange to kick a field goal or PAT and run off the field without kicking off, but I think I will have the opportunity to focus more on my field goal kicking. I do still consider myself an effective kickoff guy, although I admit that a bad lower back prevented me from kicking my best last season. My back has recovered and I am working on kicking off despite the fact that I will probably not be doing it this season. I still consider myself among the best 20 or so kickoff guys in the league. I just happen to play for the same team as someone who ranks among the top five kickoff guys in the NFL.
Despite Toby Gowin's diminutive stature, he can really rip the ball. Toby has perhaps the fastest leg in the NFL. The other really good kickoff guys are generally fairly large: over 6-foot-2 and 220 pounds. Toby weighs less than 170 pounds but his exceptional leg speed allows him to kick the ball as far as anyone. Competing against him will help me elevate my ability and our competition will probably produce a better kickoff guy for the team. If for some reason Toby can't kick off at any point during the season, I hope to be able to step in and do a great job kicking off. One other point: very few NFL teams have two capable kickoff guys. This affords our special team coach some unique opportunities to use us both on the field at the same time and try to confuse our opposition. We'll see what happens with that.
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I
still consider myself among the best 20 or so
kickoff guys in the league. I just happen to play for the same team as someone who
ranks among the top five kickoff guys in the NFL. ” |
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I have a correction. A couple days ago I was a little hard on the city of Thibodaux. I accused the climate down here of wreaking havoc on our team by making everyone sick. Yesterday our team physician told me a different hypothesis. He believes that going from the extreme heat of practice to the extreme cold in the dorms and meeting rooms (the air conditioning was set too low) has made everyone ill. Our meeting rooms have been so cold I wear a sweatshirt to avoid frostbite. I noticed yesterday that the temperature in our meetings was up making the contrast from outside to inside less extreme. I apologize for jumping the gun.
Material from kicking.com.
Visit Doug Brien's web site at http://www.kicking.com
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