Repetition Pays Off For Campers

Another blistering afternoon. Another productive practice.

The hours and days of a football training camp mount, until Tuesday looks too much like Monday all over again.

“This whole thing is like the movie Groundhog Day,” Seattle Seahawks coach Dennis Erickson said Tuesday with a wry smile. “You wake up the same morning and the same things keep happening all the time. When that clock says 6:30 or 7 every morning, you’re doin’ the same thing.”

Yet through the repetition Erickson takes pride in the signs of progress. Four days into August the coach concedes that this team at this point is further along than any of his previous three Seahawks clubs.

How much better it might be is a question best deferred to Saturday night, where in the Kingdome the Hawks meet the Indianapolis Colts in the pro football debut of Colts quarterback Peyton Manning.

The eyes of a football-watching nation may be on Manning, the No. 1 pick of the NFL draft, but after a long day Tuesday Erickson shrugged off Peyton’s place in the football world.

“Peyton Manning isn’t anything to me, other than a guy who almost won the Heisman,” the Seahawks coach said. “He’s a first-round draft pick who obviously will be a great player in this league, but he’s a rookie.

“I know our guys will be pretty excited about playing against him.”

Erickson said he was encouraged by the effort of a Seahawks team that coaches, players and spectators seem to agree is headed in the right direction.

“We had a good morning practice in pads.” he said, “and the afternoon practice was very professional. Sometimes you get out in the afternoon and the screaming and yelling isn’t there but the bottom line is we’re getting things gone.

“They’re giving all kinds of effort and that’s all you can ask for.”

Still, practice just ain’t the same

Quarterback Jon Kitna is a different player in a game.

The structure of practice doesn’t leave room for the create-on-the-run opportunities he generates.

“Scrambling when things break down, is part of my game,” Kitna said. “In practice, you don’t want to do that a lot. You want to go through your reads and really try to throw the ball. Practices are always tougher for me than games.”

There’s a precedent, by the way, in the organization for quarterbacks materializing out of nowhere.

Kitna went to Central Washington out of Lincoln High in Tacoma. Dave Krieg, a Seattle QB for a dozen years, 1980-91, came out of Milton College in Wisconsin, which no longer exists.

References to Krieg’s collegiate affiliation usually carried the disclaimer “now-defunct,” as in “Dave Krieg, from now-defunct Milton College …”

At least your school still functions, Kitna was reminded this week.

“For now,” he said with a smile. “No, that’s a good comparison. Being in the Seahawks organization, they’re going to make that comparison. Hopefully, I can do some of the things he’s done. He’s still in the league. I can’t believe it.”

Kitna was not yet 8 years old when Krieg showed up for his first training camp in Cheney.