It's a rite of passage and the most simplistic form of rookie hazing, and it's one symbol of the fun each team has during the monotonous, sweltering summer workouts.
For the players, training camp can be miserable at times. They stay holed up at a local hotel when they're not spending the majority of their days at Gillette Stadium, filtering in and out of meetings, film sessions and practices. By the third or fourth day, everyone is in pain and emotionally exhausted, yet they continue to follow the regimen like zombies.
The chance to break away from that helps team building and creates chemistry — in an us-against-them type of mentality — and training camp has a handful of defining moments that will involve very little actual football.
There's the day when the rookies get tied up and taped to the goal posts. And the day when they show up with haircuts that would make the Three Stooges look like GQ models. For someone like undrafted rookie safety Ross Ventrone, who has been growing out his shoulder-length hair for quite some time, he might opt for the Laurence Maroney treatment — sacrificing his eyebrows to save the moss on top.
Head coach Bill Belichick will also pick a day to give his team a chance for a break. After a morning practice, he'll gather the team and pick one of the — to put it nicely — less-coordinated players to catch a punt, usually an offensive lineman. If the player comes through, they get the afternoon off, and the team's ensuing on-field celebration makes the Jersey Shore kids look like Ambien-enduced monks.
And then there's the behind-the-scenes stuff that hardly gets publicized. An episode of last season's Hard Knocks, which profiled the Cincinnati Bengals, showed the rookie talent show. Some of the team's rookies stood at the front of the room and did an impression of holdout first-rounder Andre Smith's infamous 40-yard dash, which was one of the greatest moments in the history of reality television.
Training camp obviously lays the foundation for the rest of the season, but it's not limited to just X's and O's. Players show their true selves and come together during the rigors of intense practices and the mental challenges of demanding meetings. That’s why, when they're given a chance to lighten up a little, it translates into some of the most memorable moments of camp.
