The ruling finally came down from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals and this time it was in favor of the owners. That means the players must wait until either a new CBA is reached or the scheduled court date on June 3 to decide if/when they will have organized team activities. But that doesn’t stop the players from organizing their own workouts — a task that the Raiders’ Jason Campbell and Richard Seymour have taken upon themselves.
Campbell revealed last week via Twitter that he would be gathering his teammates for a workout session. In the meantime he has been holding throwing sessions with receivers Louis Murphy and Darrius Heyward-Bey.
“The timing of this lockout is really tough,” said Campbell in an interview with NFL.com. “Hue is a first-time head coach, and we brought Al Saunders over, and we all really want to work together, but we can’t do it right now. So we’ve got to make the best of it and get our teammates together and try to do the work ourselves.”
Seymour joined the efforts in seeing to it that his defensive teammates were on board. The result, according to Campbell, is around 25 Raider teammates coming together in an attempt to accomplish something similar to what they would have hoped to accomplish in mini camps and OTA’s.
The workouts will take place in Atlanta, and several Raider teammates were tweeting about their trips to the east coast all day Monday. Mike Mitchell asked Darren McFadden, “Yall ready for ATL!?” to which he responded “lol yea mane.” Jacoby Ford tweeted, “Headed to DC tonight, next week I’ll be in ATL.” And Darrius Heyward-Bey said, “I made it to Baltimore.”
The team workout will begin next Monday, May 23, and run until Friday May 27.
“It’s going to be a great chance to build on that camaraderie,” said Campbell. “We’ll start around 10 every morning and do our workouts and get on the field, and then every night we’ve got plans for everybody to go out to eat together and just spend time together and bond off the field.”
These are the times that we find out just what kind of leadership and initiative a team has. Seymour we knew was a leader of this team. But Campbell stepping up and taking the reins could be the key ingredient to this team’s success.
The team bonding off the practice field could be just as valuable. Hearing some of the tweets that go back and forth between Jacoby Ford and Darren McFadden tells you that these guys are more than just teammates, they are great friends. But not every player on this team can interact that way. They need time together.
I would go so far as to suggest that the team have their own camp like this, free of coaches, every offseason. And depending on how the guys feel after next week, they may think that is a good idea.
Certainly this isn’t the ideal situation. But with solid leaders in place, this Raider team is looking to make the best of it. And who knows, it could be a great learning experience.
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