It’s 2024. The CBA doesn’t allow extra practices, unless you like losing draft picks as punishment.
As for player-led stuff—if you don’t have players already putting in the hours they need to study film and workout away from the team, that’s a roster construction and locker room problem, not a strength and conditioning problem. You can’t mandate what players do on their own time past a certain point—you need to acquire and develop the right players and build the right culture. Not run dudes into the ground like it’s two-a-days in Remember The Titans.
It’s not the 80’s anymore. The game has changed, the players have changed. There are tons of rules in place around practice time, time with coaches, communication between staff and players, etc. And compared to the 80’s, schemes are a well-oiled intricate machine now. Players get together and run routes, sure. But mostly you’re not using time efficiently if you’re over-exerting on a practice field without coaching input. The weekly installs are what it’s about, and that requires the staff and the players operating within clearly defined parameters. You really don’t need a star player pushing it during some unauthorized player-led practice and tearing an ACL for no reason. That’s not productive.
This stuff is like clockwork now. Players wear technology while they practice that lets trainers know if they’re over-working a quad before it can pull. It’s a science as much as it’s a rah rah thing. The best work is done in walk throughs and in positional meetings, not even on the practice field.
The practice field is just one component to an entire gameplanning ecosystem that every franchise has to delicately balance. Even if there were NO rules to worry about with the league, your idea would still not be the best way to utilize the players’ limited time while managing their bodies. Players these days aren’t demolition derby vehicles waiting on the next collision. They’re F1 cars that push the limits of possibility in between meticulously calibrated pit stops.
It’s fine to prefer the old days, we just aren’t in them any more.
 }})
