With all due respect to Allen Iverson, let’s talk about practice for a moment.
Practices are not games, no matter how much they might look like it at any given moment. The Pittsburgh Steelers conduct plenty of drills that head coach Mike Tomlin would describe as football-like, but it’s never truly football. A case in point was proffered yesterday during the sixth team session in the final training camp practice.
On the sixth play of the session, NT Breiden Fehoko was working the pass rush against a Mitch Trubisky-led offense when he got his hand up in the air and tipped the ball. Fellow DL Jonathan Marshall got his hands on it for the interception.
“Instead of celebrating, Fehoko put his head in his hands”, Chris Adamski of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported. “Later on, he explained that defensive linemen were instructed not to bat down balls during that drill”.
In other words, he did what he was told not to do. And what he did didn’t really mean anything as a result.
If you’re running a drill in which the defensive linemen are instructed to keep their hands down, that changes the way the offense is going to play. Trubisky was reading his passing lanes with the understanding that he wouldn’t be grappling with a sea of arms.
He might have made a different decision with the throw had he read Fehoko and anticipated that he might get his arms up and bat the ball, so we can’t say that this play would have even happened in an in-game circumstance.
That’s where we get into the heart of practice not being games. You’re not going to find many circumstances in which defensive linemen are specifically instructed to keep their hands down and not try to defend a pass coming through their lane.
But you will in practice when you’re conducting a drill in which you’re honing different skills for which batted passes would be an impediment. If Fehoko was told to keep his hands down, it was for a good reason as the team worked on some other asset.
And it’s another reminder to take everything you see in practice with a grain of salt, because you never know exactly what the instructions are for any given player on any given rep, whether in one-on-one or team drills.
It’s called practice for a reason. They are trying out different things, developing and refining skills. The object of that particular drill was not to see who would win between the offense and defense, necessarily, though that’s not to say it is not competitive.
As far as Fehoko goes, it’s understandable. You naturally play with instincts and your instinct in that situation is to try to swat the ball down in that moment. He instantly recognized what he did, according to Adamski, once it was done, but those things happen. At least he got to practice his batting motion.
