NFL players beware: It's staged anger season in the league.
Bills guard Richie Incognito referred to it as a "butt chewing" by new head coach Sean McDermott, who stopped practice Monday and ripped into his players. The Buffalo News described it this way:
McDermott suddenly brought practice at St. John Fisher College to a halt, gathered the entire team at midfield and had players take a knee because, well, this was going to take a while. Then, in a forceful and animated way, the coach made it clear that he was not the least bit happy with the slow and sloppy manner in which the session was going to that point. He didn't like that players kept asking for calls to be repeated and that one day before camp was to break, there was a general sense of what Incognito described as "guys feeling a little sorry for themselves."
Oddly enough, this came on the same day that Jets coach Todd Bowles stopped practice after a fight and yelled at his players. This was also the same day Bruce Arians got after his wide receivers post practice, saying that there were only two players at the position good enough to be in the NFL, and that he might "look around, see who's available."
While some of this is coincidence, this is about the time in camp where coaches are looking to re-set the intensity. It's a trick dating back to the days where your high school coach in any respective sport would, for some reason, end a practice with an uncountable number of wind sprints (UPDATE: Sean McVay made his players run wind sprints Monday) or show you a made up flier from Rival School High insulting your toughness. Some of the more regimented coaches probably have it listed on their calendars somewhere.
It's a glimpse into how difficult it is to coach a professional football team. Getting the most out of 90 grown men at once is difficult when everything is new and fresh, never mind the dog days of August where so much frustration tends to set in.
The good news for McDermott is that the tirade seemed to go well.
"A lot of guys needed to hear that," Incognito told the Buffalo News. "A lot of guys at this level are not used to hearing that. The practice instantly changed. It got chippy, it got physical, it got violent. We had some live periods in there. You mix in a little bit of Coach McDermott's speech and a little bit of just being hot and tired, and you kind of get a powder keg getting ready to explode."
Stay tuned for the next obvious staged anger period, just before the mid-season point in the NFL where your coach just might bury a football if you're lucky.
