Following the mandated four days without pads to start training camp, most NFL teams are finally hitting the thumping portion of practices.
For the Arizona Cardinals, the pads went on Monday. Leave it to coach Bruce Arians to succinctly explain what that means.
"FIFA is over," Arians said, per the team's official website.
Throughout the offseason we hear about certain skill position players dazzling in workouts. Then the hitting begins and some of those players seem to fade from memory.
"Some guys are outstanding in shorts and you can evaluate them, but when the noise level goes up they disappear," Arians said. "Other guys that look ugly in shorts are football players. The real evaluations start now.
"It's just the nature of the beast," he added. "There's always been a couple linebackers I've been around where it's like, 'This guy can't help us.' But then when you put the pads on nobody could block him, he made every play, which you never get to see. Same thing with fullbacks. They traditionally look like (expletive) in shorts."
Football isn't played in shorts; it's played in pads. So now the real evaluations begin for teams as we careen toward the 2015 season.
The latest Around The NFL Podcast debates whose stock is up and whose stock is down after the first week of training camp.
