After injuries made the 2021 season one of the most challenging in Ravens history, Head Coach John Harbaugh said Monday that there will be adjustments made to OTA's and training camp.
"We've changed a lot of what we're doing," Harbaugh said. "We're going to approach OTAs differently. We're going to approach training camp, some big-picture scheduling differently in terms of the way we ramp and in terms of the way we time practices, how long we're on the field and what we're doing on the field and how we pace the rhythm of the practices.
"We think we have some really good ideas and I'm excited about it. It's priority one, for sure, along with being really good and making sure we put a good team on the field and we're prepared. So I'm excited to see how it works out. But, in the end, you just got to go through it and see what happens."
Every third day of training camp will have a different format compared to previous years.
"It'll be a little bit shorter, a little more execution-oriented, less competitive-type of practice," Harbaugh said. "Even our practices will go less ones against ones than we have done in the past. Things like that, I think, will help us."
The Ravens have done extensive research into why the injury bug hit them so hard last season. While there are no definitive answers, Harbaugh is optimistic some of the new practice and training scheduling will help.
"I don't know if we've reached any conclusions about why the injuries happened," Harbaugh said. "Nobody has those conclusions. We've listened. We've seen all the studies. We talked to all the NFL people. All the studies they're doing. There are really no answers that you can definitively (say), 'this is the cause and the effect.' But we've looked at everything we've done. Like we said, we turned over every stone."
