Seahawks’ new normal: Props, playbooks, skits and studying--all through a computer screen
Instead of going to Seahawks headquarters to learn his new team in its offseason training this month, Greg Olsen is going to his kitchen.
Each day, he greets his wife and their three young children. He says hi to their dog. Eventually, Olsen he takes a five-minute trip from his home in Charlotte, N.C., down the road to the office of his foundation, Receptions For Research. He’s been in there planning last weekend’s annual The HEARTest Yard event and 5K race in Charlotte to raise awareness and funds for children with congenital heart disorders.
And he’s in there, 2,300 miles from Seattle, in what he says is the scarce quiet he can find while locked down in his full house, learning the Seahawks’ offense. From behind a desk and through a computer screen.
For two hours each weekday afternoon for the last three weeks, the three-time Pro Bowl tight end has been in his North Carolina office connected to Russell Wilson, Pete Carroll and 70 or so new Seahawks teammates through a Zoom online video call.
It’s the new normal in the NFL, this all-virtual, from-home offseason like no other amid our coronavirus pandemic.
“All of our meetings have just been installs (of the playbook),” Olsen said on yet another Zoom call last week. “We are doing installs, learning terminology: run game, pass game, pass protections. Trying to do some virtual ‘walkthrough’ kind of simulation-type stuff, just to get guys engaged, get guys processing plays.”
Players would, in any other year, be on the field through May into June. They’d be practicing in what the league calls organized team activities (OTAs) and minicamps. But the COVID-19 virus and states’ stay-at-home orders to try and contain its spread has closed all NFL team facilities indefinitely. Players are home instead, connected by online video conferences. Monday began the third of three consecutive weeks of the league’s virual offseason training.
No one in the league—heck, in the country—knows when normal will return. It’s increasingly likely virtual Zoom online calls will be the only way NFL coaches and players interact and until training camp.
Thing is, no one knows when training camp will begin, either. It won’t until states’ restrictions on non-essential businesses and social-distancing requirements ease enough for team facilities to re-open. That could be by late July, as scheduled. It could be August. It could be later.
Carroll has embraced this new reality of NFL offseason workouts. Seattle’s veteran coach is splicing in game videos to exemplify plays and concepts. Each day, he gets the veteran Seahawks together on the same screen and conference call to kick off the days’ in-home training. Then the players enter a second Zoom, “sub-call” with their position coaches and coordinators.
Offensive and defensive assistant coaches then have their players talk through their computer screens where they are to be per position on certain plays—the unique, “virtual walkthroughs” Olsen mentioned. Assistant coaches set up cones or other representations in their yards of where players are assigned to be on plays. Wilson demonstrates his pre-snap quarterback routine for his computer camera, so Olsen and other new Seahawks, in particular, can get used to them through a screen instead of in person.
Carroll has also added his usual, personal touches of comedy and way to keep the Seahawks engaged.
The coach has had his old friend Will Ferrell, the actor and comedian, surprise the Seahawks by joining one of the team’s daily Zoom calls. Ferrell pretended he was Olsen, and Carroll pretended to introduce him semi-formally to his new team for the first time.
At one point, Ferrell—er, Olsen—stood up and pulled up his Seahawks 12 jersey from the waist to show the players and coaches through his computer’s camera his “NFL-ready core.”
Carroll, Wilson and his teammates got a particular laugh out of that.
“My core is better than his,” Olsen deadpanned this week, “which I guess will be good.”
One day Carroll asked All-Pro linebacker and captain Bobby Wagner, a huge NBA fan and self-proclaimed basketball stud, to share with his teammates on Zoom what he’s been learning from Michael Jordan in “The Last Dance,” the documentary they’re all watching on ESPN.
This is the way of the NFL right now. Skits, videos, props in a coach’s backyard, playbook instruction, entertainment—all with a Zoom call and expert use of the mute button.
“Obviously, it’s been very different than what I’ve been used to, what everybody’s been used to,” Olsen said.
Carroll is keenly aware of that. He has been striving to, as he says, win at this virtual training, too, to do it better than anyone else in keeping his players engaged, interested, learning and improving now for whenever the season begins.
For a lively, sun’s-always-out motivator renowned for his personal touches and emphasis on face-to-face interactions, this is the most unique time in his 47 years as a football coach.
“It is different. It’s not the same,” Carroll said. “You can feel that there’s a separation in there, that we are a very close group and we do communicate. ...It is going to be different in that regard, and with the player, as well, and as we start to bring in new guys, it’s just going to take us longer in some regards. ...
“The way this has worked out, it feels like a one-on-one meeting So I think guys are going to relate to that.”
Yet Carroll acknowledges he’s not sure how far behind he will be connecting with players and vice versa whenever they do get back on the field and play games.
“I can’t tell you, really,” he said. “The overall impact that we have, because of our personal relationships that we’ve built and the way we go about it, I don’t know that. ...
“But I know that we’ll be on crash-course time when we do come back together. ...It’s going to be different, and I can’t really tell you what it’s going to come out like.”
So far, so good, on the communicating, according to one of the newest Seahawks.
“We just wrapped up our meetings (for the day); they are doing a really good job,” Olsen said. “I think we are getting a lot done, considering the circumstances. Through technology nowadays, you can really have a lot of interaction. You can really have a lot of dialogue. They are doing a nice job simulating it.”
He jokes he learns through a “Brady Bunch screen,” all the rows and columns of boxes containing remote images of his teammates he’s yet to meet (besides Wilson, at February’s Super Bowl).
The 35-year-old veteran of 13 NFL seasons knows he’s not getting the introduction to the team and his new city that he signed up for in January. Olsen and his wife Kara already had a place picked out in the Seattle area, with plans to move the family here this spring for OTAs and minicamps.
Those plans, that new NFL life, is like the lives of most Americans right now: on hold.
“It doesn’t make it any easier the fact that you’re trying to transition to a new team, a new organization,” he said. “This is the first new offense I’ve learned in a long time. It would have been easier, obviously, to do this in person. That was part of what I was looking forward to. I was looking forward to getting out there a couple weeks back and, you know, just getting used to the area, getting familiar with the guys on the team and in the locker room. And then, of course, really be able to dive in on the offense and the scheme, and kind of learn with a little bit more hands-on approach. ...
“The whole league—the whole world, I guess, for that matter—is kind of in the same boat. So, we are making the best of it. It’s not how I pictured it when I signed in February. But it’s not just me. There are tons of guys around the league who are adjusting to new teams, new cities, and haven’t quite been able to get out there.”
