In what has become practically customary in the league, 30 NFL clubs have scheduled joint practice sessions with other teams during upcoming training camps.
The Kansas City Chiefs, however, are one of just two teams (alongside the Las Vegas Raiders) who won't have a joint practice with another team during their 2024 training camp. They'll head to St. Joe and do what they've always done—practice and compete together as a team. The Chiefs have never held a joint training camp practice under head coach Andy Reid and it's not for a lack of other teams trying. Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell apparently broached the subject with Coach Reid.
“It just, it didn’t work out,” Campbell told The Detroit News. “I had talked to Coach Reid a while back, that’s just not necessarily something that they do."
But why don't the Chiefs engage in joint practices when they have become so popular among NFL teams? Reid first spoke on the situation during his second season as head coach in Kansas City back in 2014.
“I’ve just never been that big on that,” Reid said of joint practices. “A lot of teams do it. A lot of successful teams do it. I really don’t want to give anybody anything that I don’t have to give.”
Part of Reid's desire to keep things separate has to do with guarding his playbook, coaching points, and concepts as much as possible. Nowadays, that's a bit more difficult. You could have cameras rolling with "Hard Knocks" (like the Chicago Bears this season) or you could just have fans coming to camp, and recording during team periods on their cellular devices.
"I've had a lot of opportunities to do it, but probably from a selfish standpoint, in today's world, with technology, there's not a lot of secrets," Reid told reporters back in 2015. "You have your coaching points, teaching points you try to teach on the field and I really don't want anyone hearing that. That's my own personal feeling. As much as I can keep in-house in today's world, I want to do. I think you give up a little bit of that when you work with them and some of these things get a little out of hand. Things happen with the competition.”
Beyond the secrecy that Reid likes to keep, he's set in his ways that have been proven tried and true. He has simple expectations during training camp. That's for everyone to come in, work hard, take care of business, and set the team up for success during the upcoming season. He doesn't need anything more than that.
It's particularly difficult to accomplish those goals when you're spending time coordinating and managing players outside of your organization. It's hard to teach when you have to deal with spats and scrums in practice. It's also hard for players to focus on what they need to focus on when they're competing against players who aren't their teammates.
At the end of the day, the back-to-back Super Bowl champions have earned the right to practice as they see fit. The trends surrounding the rest of the NFL matter little so long as the Chiefs continue to see success on the football field.
