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Imrem: Volunteering a thought on NFL's OTAs

Please, everybody, stop frowning over Alshon Jeffery's absence from organized team activities.

By everybody I mean the Bears and their fans and the local football media.

Some of them are blabbering out loud about Jeffery. Others are snickering their disdain. Still others are merely thinking critical thoughts.

What part of "voluntary" don't these people understand?

Personally, I wouldn't mind if every NFL player had to work on his game with his teammates every day of the season and off-season.

However, the rules dictate that OTAs are "voluntary," so Jeffery shouldn't be blamed for RSVPing his regrets.

If the Bears wide receiver wants to take his mind off football for six months, good for him. If he wants to work out on his own, he can afford a personal trainer. If he wants to make a statement about having to play the coming season under a $14.6 million franchise tag, so be that, too.

Take sports writers: Ask them to come to the office on vacation time, practice crafting stories and submit them for an editor's review … well, a revolt would ensue.

NFL players technically are off right now except for the ones "voluntarily" showing up for OTAs.

Which, of course, is just about every guy on every roster around the league.

Pro football players, including the superstars, show up for OTAs because they're conditioned to be insecure.

Pressure from coaches and peers shame them into believing that the workouts establish camaraderie and a foundation for football fundamentals.

To play well in autumn and win a championship in winter, the brainwashing goes, players must bond in the spring.

This is all pretty much silly nonsense.

Last season's Super Bowl winner conducted organized team activities, but so did the team that lost enough to earn the rights to the first overall draft pick.

Every team in the league did OTAs, from 1 through 32. Heck, the Bears assemble like this every year, finished 6-10 in 2015 and haven't made the playoffs since 2010.

Did the champion Broncos perform their organized team activities better than everyone else a year ago or is all the extra work a crock of poppycock wrapped in balderdash sprinkled with phoo-phah?

The off-season is filled not only with OTAs but with rookie minicamps and veteran minicamps and maybe astronaut camps and cowboy camps and fantasy camps.

Still, as always, too many fumbles and too many interceptions and too many missed tackles and too many missed assignments and too many unforced errors are committed during the season anyway.

Here's what an NFL off-season should consist of: nothing involving football from the last game of the season until the first day of training camp.

Then when a player shows up for duty in July, that's when he starts getting into shape between exhibition games.

Doesn't the season take enough of a toll on a player's body, to say nothing of his head?

Even with minimal physical contact at this time of the year, just twisting and turning and running and jumping is stressful.

Alshon Jeffery isn't odd for not being at OTAs; other players at Halas Hall and around the league are odd for showing up.

Really, every part of the word "voluntary" is easy enough to understand.

mimrem@dailyherald.com

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