This is ridiculous

Spring practices are for learning the system and developing chemistry with teammates, not for media stats.

If these teams had their druthers, they wouldn’t let the media into OTA practices, but the league makes them.

When I see some reporters doing QB passing stats in OTAs, it makes me want to vomit.

It is reckless and irresponsible and a perfect example of why teams don’t want to let us in.

And some reporters used their preposterous passing stats from Wednesday’s OTA to go after Allen Lazard, who they have turned into a pinata.

There were reports out of the echo chamber on Wednesday that Aaron Rodgers was 1 of 5 targeting Lazard on Wednesday.

And by reporters putting this out, it led fans on social media to attack Lazard, who is low-hanging fruit right now.

One reporter, who also reported the Jets were looking to replace Nathaniel Hackett this off-season, tweeted about Rodgers: “He is 1 of 5 when targeting Allen Lazard & 10 of 12 when targeting everyone else.”

Perfectly put if you want to trigger fans to go after Lazard. He knows what he’s doing.

But remember, these weren’t necessarily drops, they were just failed connections.

I didn’t see Lazard drop a pass.

We mentioned two of the plays yesterday.

There was that one pass down the deep middle which Lazard could not run under. He did nothing wrong here, he’s not a burner and perhaps Rodgers overthrew it a little, but it was not a drop.

Another player was a back shoulder fade in the end zone that Quan’tez Stiggers had good coverage.

These spring practices are about teaching, learning, conditioning and developing chemistry.

For the teams to be nice enough to let us in to observe a few of them, and some reporters to then make observations that make players look bad, is wrong.

These spring practices are a classroom for players.

For many young players, they are still trying to learn the playbook and also need a ton of work on their technique, and a big part of these spring practices is teaching players the scheme and fixing technique issues they might have.

Now, don’t get me wrong, if a player is out there dropping passes left and right, that is a problem.

For years, these camps were called “passing camps” because since there is no tackling and limited contract in these drills, running plays can be a waste of time, but working on the passing game is something you can do.

But I didn’t see Lazard drop any passes on Wednesday – these were just incompletions for one reason or another. It happens.

Maybe Lazard needs to get out of here.

Perhaps the well has been poisoned, and some in the media are helping to fuel the hatred, with misleading reports like we saw yesterday.

Maybe if a team needs a receiver in August, they could make a trade, though they would incur a pretty big hit, so they might not want to do that.

I happen to think Lazard will be okay with Rodgers at QB this year, and nothing that happened yesterday would change my opinion.

These were misconnections not drops.

May 30, 2024

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