Bears, Rams scrimmage caps week
Bears, Rams scrimmage caps week
August 7, 2004
By KEVIN CAPIE
of the Journal Star
MACOMB - Three days of joint workouts between the St. Louis Rams and Chicago Bears come to a close this morning with a 10:30 a.m. scrimmage at Hanson Field.
For both teams, the goal of today's scrimmage is to continue the progress that has been made from the first day of practice when camp opened.
"We want to improve our team. We're not keeping score," Bears coach Lovie Smith said. "We came up here to have some good practices against a good team, and we're getting that type of work done."
The Rams will use today's scrimmage to work in some of the younger players.
"We're going to take a look at our inexperienced players," Rams coach Mike Martz said. "We're going to make sure that the younger players get some repetitions."
Getting closer: It is rare in today's NFL that a team would take a flier on signing an injured player as a free agent while that player is still rehabbing from the injury.
That's exactly what the Rams did during the offseason in signing defensive tackle Bernard Holsey, who started all 16 games last season for Washington. He had surgery in February to repair his injured quadricep.
Holsey began working out on Friday and hopes to be able to play by the end of the preseason.
"It's a little frustrating right now," Holsey said. "The guys are out there sweating, but I can only do a limited number of things."
What wasn't frustrating was when the Rams called expressing interest even though he was injured.
"That was amazing," Holsey said. "I wasn't expecting to hear from any teams until August. I appreciate that they called. I'm sure I would have had some more interest, but they called first."
Said Martz: "He's played at a really I level. I've seen him play and our scouts really liked him."
Holsey's return comes at a time when the Rams need some more depth after defensive tackle Jimmy Kennedy suffered a broken foot during Thursday's afternoon workout. He is expected to miss three to four months.
"He just put his foot on the ground, there was no contact or anything," Martz said. "Hopefully we'll get him back halfway through the season."
Points of emphasis: Officials have been working with the Bears and Rams this week.
They're going over some of the rule changes, as well as the rules that haven't changed but will be emphasized this season.
The biggest point this year that will be enforced is not allowing defenders to intentionally contact receivers 5 yards past the line of scrimmage.
"The players will start to adjust to it," referee Bernie Kukar said. "During practice we'll point out to them what they can't do, in the preseason games we'll call it and then they'll adjust by the regular season."
Replay this season also has been slightly modified to allow a team three challenges if they correctly challenged their previous two and have a timeout remaining.
Even with this and the points of emphasis, not everything will be called.
"We're going to miss stuff," Kukar said. "We're not perfect."
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