As camp approaches, coaching staffs everywhere tackle the issue of how to balance preparing your starters for the season, while also making sure that second and third-string players are prepared to a level where they can step in and play if a starter goes down with an injury.
That can be a very delicate balancing act, and the approach can vary greatly from staff to staff, and from the NFL, to college, to high school.
After the first practice of training camp, new Tampa Bay Bucs head coach Dirk Koetter was asked about their approach of using a "rep chart" over the typical depth chart to prepare everyone during camp, and Koetter shared an interesting nugget about how they split reps.
"We have a rep chart. Our one's are getting about 50% of the training camp, and 50-30-20 is kind of what our one's, two's and three's get right now."
Koetter goes on to note that "there are some guys that float back and fourth, and then you get into personnel groups on both sides" so it can be difficult to track that 50-30-20 split, but that's what they're aiming for at the end of the day.
At the college level, a number of programs opt to keep young guys and scout players after practice during fall camp to run an abbreviated team session so that guys that aren't getting live reps during practice are still getting a refresher on their own schemes.
Hear Koetter's explanation of the "rep chart" in the video.