Jun 26th 2008 6:30AM by Stephanie Stradley (author feed)
Filed under: Texans, AFC South, HoustonAs yesterday’s FanHouse NFL Liveblog discussed, sometimes we hear more about NFL players who are getting in trouble, than the ones who don’t.

Ross Tucker, in a worth-reading SI.com story talks about the temptations that NFL players face in their downtime, and the ways that NFL teams are dealing with it. One way is to shorten the time between the offseason program and training camp:
Instead of beginning in mid- to late-March and finishing in mid- to late-June, teams could easily push those dates back in an effort to close the gap of time before training camp. Teams could potentially shift the beginning of their allotted offseason time to the second week of April and finish it sometime in early July and still give the players a couple of weeks off to mentally re-charge before the rigors of training camp begins. This not only would help teams keep a shorter leash on their players, but also satisfy coaches who often worry their players are not putting the time in working out and studying their playbooks during the downtime.
One team subscribing to this theory is Houston. The Texans started their offseason program March 31 and won’t conclude until the week after July 4th, leaving less than two weeks between the end of the program and the start of training camp on July 25. It’s clear Texans GM Rick Smith and coach Gary Kubiak are hoping this wrinkle will pay dividends on the field.

The theory of a shorter time between the offseason program and the training camp seems to make sense to me, but Tucker cites unnamed league sources who explain why teams are reluctant to do this. It’s a copycat league, and well, over-worked coaches would miss their traditional vacation time.