Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers says training camp was “much harder” this year. Jets head coach Robert Saleh says that’s how to prepare a team for a hard season.
Asked today about the comments Rodgers made yesterday, Saleh said that he thinks sports have gone too far in the direction of coddling players, and that hard work is necessary to get players ready to play.
“We’re not trying to revisit the Junction Boys, but at the same time, this country club style that’s kind of taking on all of sport -- not just football but all of sport -- there’s a fine line. They’ve got to be ready to play football,” Saleh said.
The Junction Boys were the Texas A&M football players who went through a brutal training camp in Junction, Texas, in 1954 under head coach Bear Bryant. The story of Bryant’s legendarily harsh methods during all-day practices in 100-degree heat was turned into a book and then a movie called The Junction Boys. Suffice to say that no football coach at any level of the sport runs a training camp anything like Bryant’s anymore.
But some coaches run harder camps than others, and if Saleh is known as a coach who makes his players work hard over the summer, he’ll take that. And he’s confident the results will speak for themselves in the fall and winter.