The NFL recently came down on the Seattle Seahawks for breaking the league's no-contact policy, to which the NFL Management Council and NFLPA has penalized the team by taking away two OTA days and another workout day this week.
Head coach Pete Carroll joined KJR in Seattle with Dave ‘Softy' Mahler to explain how the Seattle Seahawks violated NFL rules during OTA's, when they took place, and what can be done now that they sanctions have come down.
What did you guys do in OTA's that ticked off the NFL?
"It's really simply that we were practicing in too physical of a nature. We were getting after it in a way that they thought was more than expected and we had a visit from one of the official guys from the Players Association. He watched our practice and thought it was a good practice, but they went back and looked at some tapes of other practices that they thought were over the top, so we've asked these guys to compete and bust their tales to get everything that we can these days and in their eyes we took it to a physical nature that was too high of a level of intensity.
Do you know when this took place?
"Which day it was? They didn't tell us that. I don't know which days they looked at. I don't know that. We really haven't discussed any of this with them. They haven't contacted us. They all did it through other channels. We just heard an official word that it could happen and it came down. Hopefully and we really feel like we had great practices obviously. We got a ton of work done, so we are in good shape going into mini-camp whether we had those days or not. We've made a lot of progress and we're really looking forward to those next three days being really big ones for us."
Why was the NFL looking at the video of your OTA's to begin with? Where they tipped off by somebody?
"They do travel around some and they have not been to all of the clubs practices, which I am disappointed in. They do not have as far as I understand they haven't looked at everybody's practices. They don't know what other guys are doing, so that was the one issue I had. I said okay if you are going to really scrutinize us please look at everybody's practices, so that you can compare just so that we know what is going on. We are trying to do this thing right and we are trying to utilize the rules in a manner that we can and let us know what everyone else is doing. They didn't do that. They just went ahead and responded, but they did have...there was a little pushing thing that happened on the practice field a week ago. There was an article written about it and that did draw their attention and that's what kind of came up and said well we are going to come out and check you out and so they did and the guy that came out he loved what we did. He said it was the best OTA he had seen. That's exactly what he said and we thought we were on track, but then when they went back and looked at some other stuff they just thought we were getting after it too much and we working too hard for them. We just have to adjust and get back to the standards. The problem is we have nothing to go by in terms of looking at film. There's no illustrations that has been presented to us so we can see if this is the standard. We just have to go by the subjective of what is written and then what they feel after they look at it. I thought we were on track because the guy said we were okay, but then they looked back and got us on something. Nothing we can do about it now."
There were no OTA's last year right? This goes back to the deal that was struck before the 2007 season? Correct?
"Yeah if you think about it all the young guys on this team that have never been through OTA's you know. We are trying to figure it out as we are going and we're pushing the limits as much as we could to get as much out of it as possible. It almost always comes back to the young guys. Young guys that are overzealous and trying to prove themselves as part of the team and they are trying to make a play and they grab a guy and pull a guy to the ground and things like that. We didn't do any of the things...you are not allowed to do one-on-one's. You are not allowed to do one-on-one pass rush with offensive lineman and defensive lineman and that kind of stuff. We didn't go outside any of those obvious guidelines. We were just too physical and they made note of it."
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