Tempers Flare With Ditka’s Approval

The recipe for what’s cooking at the New Orleans Saints training camp is simple: mix full pads, hard hitting, hours of conditioning and maintain constant heat.

If, while simmering, tempers flare, that’s OK with coach Mike Ditka.

The Saints were less than an hour into a morning workout when offensive lineman Tom Ackerman and linebacker Brian Jones squared off.

“I want them to be very aggressive on both sides of the ball, challenge people,” Ditka said later, after the first of the tough two-a-day practices he plans. “That’s going to create a few hard feelings. One guy will get mad at another guy. I’ve never seen too many guys get hurt in a fight on a football field, though. Too much equipment.”

With the temperature hitting 85 and the humidity at 97 percent, players went full speed during drills. The sound of pads popping and curses flying punctuated the 2-hour workouts.

“We certainly set the tempo early,” said assistant Rick Venturi, the interim coach last season after Jim Mora quit. “Coach wants to find out what he’s got quickly and he wants to put his brand on this team. Mike Ditka’s brand is hard hitting.”

After a four-year absence, Ditka returned to training camp convinced the philosophy he used in building a winning team in Chicago was still sound.

He was not running a boot camp, he assured the players. He was going to demand repetition and perfection, enough hitting to get ready for it in games and attention to detail.

The Saints have gotten rid of nine starters from the 1996 team that went 3-13. The average player age has dropped more than a full year, from 26.5 at the end of ‘96 to 25.3 now. The turnover in the roster is almost one-third at the start of camp.

“You see the job that’s ahead of us,” Ditka said. “But I like what I see. I think they want to do it. They’re willing to try it and that’s all I can ask. I think they’ll pay the price and try to do what we say. For the first day, I’ve seen a lot worse.”

Practice alone isn’t enough, Ditka said. Perfect practice is what’s needed, mastering the basics, the fundamentals to the point a player has solid technique. Once that’s done, the coaches can build on it, he said.

The other thing he wants is a solid work ethic that will see them run every play as hard as possible. That will build a team psyche like the one he had with Chicago, an attitude that the players can count on each other and can be almost unbeatable.