Tony Sparano discusses the challenges of this training camp as well touching on a variety of personnel topics
Q. When you got the players together for the first time following the lockout, what was your message to them?
TS: It was all about winning, nothing about anything in the past. I could care less about anything that happened in the past. We are thinking about moving forward now. It’s about our team. I presented our team goals and our philosophies. They were pretty clear and the players understand the direction we want to head in.
Q. Put into words what this off season was like for you, waiting for the two sides to settle?
TS: It was kind of an eerie offseason. It was at times out here lonely. I’ve tried to manage my coaches as best as I could. Those guys worked hard and long hours during that time. But I did get them out of the building a little bit knowing that their summer was going to get cut short and that’s what happened. We had an awful lot of time to spend on football and learn about each other as coaches.
Q. This training camp has to be one of the most difficult tests you have had as a head coach, getting players ready in such a short time without the benefit of an off season program and with so many important evaluations to make. Can you talk about this?
TS: It was a very difficult summer because of all the possible scenarios out there that you had to plan and prepare for. But I’m very fortunate that this coaching staff did an outstanding job in preparation. We were ready when the new rules came down and we put our plan in place. The players, to their credit, came back in good shape. Maybe not the way they would have been if we had the offseason training program, but they still showed a lot of maturity in their preparation.
Q. There’s been a lot of talk already about Chad Henne. What have you seen so far from him?
TS: I’ve seen really good progress out of Chad Henne in several areas. If the lockout was good for anything or anybody it was good for Chad. Most quarterbacks in the league really had to be the ringleaders in the lockout time for the player only workouts. Why show up if the quarterback isn’t there? In this case, that really worked well for Chad. Our team responded well to him from what I can gather. That helped put him out there in front. All that being said, he’s throwing the ball better down the field and that’s another area of improvement. And he has tremendous, tremendous knowledge. He’s the guy with the answers right now in this offense.
Q. Are you confident that there is time to give the young players a fair shot?
TS: I think there is enough time. You have to do it wisely. At some point early on, though, you have to get your team ready to play. The rules, and the way the rules have gone down, have aided that process a little. Some of the free agent players we signed and some of the exclusive rights guys were not able to practice until August 4th, so we had the first couple of weeks without 12 guys being able to practice. That allowed the young players to get some additional practice time.
Q. What is your philosophy on tackling in training camp? Is there a fine line between too much tackling and too little and shouldn’t at this level players know how to tackle?
TS: They should know how to tackle at this level, but they don’t. In other words, it’s a fundamental they have to work on. From our end, my philosophy is that you don’t want to do it in a full speed drill many times. We will do it on occasion on goal line and short yardage or even in a team period, but very few times and it would be early on in camp. We coach the fundamentals. That’s a hard thing with the amount of practice time we missed in spring so we have to make up for that now.
