It's a familiar battle cry of sorts during any team's offseason program to point out that their rival is possibly working harder than they are.
Here, it could go something like "Think of all the work the Titans (Or Colts, Jags) are doing RIGHT NOW to try to beat us!"
This goes all the way down to the high school level and perhaps earlier. "Think of all those (insert rival high school name here) kids sweating it out right now! We need to be better than they are!"
Of course this year it's been much more of a zoom-call kind of thing. I'm not sure what you can say. "Think of all the studying they're doing!" might not cut it. Of course you can still use the rival's imagined prep for individual motivation.
It might be easy to say that whoever handled this corona-filled off season better might have a leg up. But we still have a training camp to navigate through, not to mention avoiding positive COVID-19 tests.
Bill O'Brien talked about it being a veteran type of year because of the lack of prep time. We just got through an offseason of zero contact. Now we'll have a camp that's a TBD in terms of how it'll be run.
You could say everyone is in the same boat but it's not true. The teams, like the Texans, with returning offensive lines and seasoned quarterbacks should have an edge. And Houston's wide receiver crew may have new faces but they are established pros who know how to adapt quickly and make plays.
The defense has plenty of familiar faces mixed with some new ones eager to contribute. It's more doable for a defense to take a big step forward in a shorter amount of time than an offense. My buddies Andre Ware and Spencer Tillman sometimes remind me that building an offense means you're creating something while a defense seeks to destroy.
There are plenty of questions about how this season might go down and we're getting close to getting close to coming up with some answers as camp could start as soon as four weeks from Tuesday.
