After months of anticipation, Brock Osweiler took the field with his teammates and practiced with the entire offense for the first time since becoming a Texan.
Osweiler's excitement was unmistakable.
"It was fantastic," Osweiler said. "This is what football is all about. It's about putting on the helmets, calling a play in the huddle, breaking the huddle and actually going out there and running it against an opponent. Today was a lot of fun, finally get out there and get the bullets flying a little bit. Speaking the language, calling plays, running through cadences, making mike points, it was just a lot of fun getting back to work and really going against a defense today."
The Texans held the first of ten OTA team practices on Monday as the team entered Phase Three of offseason workouts. Before Monday's practice, players were limited to position group drills through the first two phases of OTAs. For the next three weeks, clubs are permitted to conduct 7-on-7, 9-on-7, and 11-on-11 drills barring any live contact.
"It's installing in the morning and then it's going out there and walking through it on the field then actually repping it full speed," Osweiler said. "For a lot of guys, it's our first time maybe repping that play. So you're not really sure what's going to happen, then you go into the film room a couple minutes from now and we watch it as a unit and we try to get on the same page and we keep repping that. That's really the phase that we're in right now."
Osweiler, entering his fifth season, knows what to expect on the first day of OTAs from experience. The first day of team practice is a mixed bag of good plays and what the 25-year-old quarterback refers to as "learning experiences," i.e. incompletions and turnovers. Building chemistry quickly early was part of the reason why Osweiler wanted to get a group of receivers to a week-long throwing session in Arizona earlier this offseason.
"Every rep, every look, every conversation about a route, a protection, a play, a concept it extremely important," Osweiler said. "The clock's ticking. It's hard to believe that we're already into phase three and like I said we put on the helmets today, we went out there and we practiced for the first time, but bottom line like I said, the fact that I was able to get the receivers to come out to Arizona way back in April and get some work, it was a great jump start but that's all it was. It was a great jump start and we still have a lot of work to do."
See photos from Monday's Texans OTA workout.
