WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. -- Safety Rafael Bush didn’t like what he was hearing on the first day the New Orleans Saints practiced in full pads Saturday. Rather, what he wasn’t hearing.
So the veteran spoke up in a meeting before Sunday’s practice.
“I told guys I didn’t hear enough pads popping yesterday,” Bush said. “And we answered the bell.”
Sunday’s practice was the feistiest and loudest yet of the first four days of training camp, with coaches yelling with intensity and those pads popping hard on several occasions.
Safety Kenny Vaccaro, especially, was delivering some big hits -- stopping just short of full tackling.
The Saints’ first two padded practices have been “Full Go Thud,” which means playing at full speed and delivering stand-up hits to runners and receivers without taking them to the ground.
“Those first couple days of pads, it’s very exciting for some of us defensive guys,” Bush said. “I think you saw a lot of big hits today. But that’s just an intensity we bring as far as a defense. ... What you saw today, that’s the tempo we expect to bring.”
Bush had at least one or two big pops of his own but admitted Vaccaro “was a couple up on me today.”
“Tomorrow I’ll try to come out here and one-up on him,” Bush said.
Vaccaro delivered big hits on fullback Erik Lorig and receiver Josh Morgan, among others, in the open field. Vaccaro also had a would-be sack on a blitz and got into a tangle with the offensive line on another one.
“I think when we put the tape on, we’ll see a lot of good things, we’ll see some things that he needs to work on,” Saints coach Sean Payton said of Vaccaro. “I like the intensity he plays with. It matters to him. He’s physical.”
Overall, Payton liked what he saw -- and heard -- from Sunday’s practice as well.
“I thought this morning’s work was pretty good, better than we’ve had in a while,” Payton said.
Not everything went perfectly, though, as there were a handful of occasions where coaches loudly reprimanded a player for a missed assignment or demanded they line up again and start a play over. One example that especially stood out came when receivers coach John Morton yanked receiver Seantavius Jones out of the lineup.
Payton said it was a point of emphasis Sunday to focus on quickly moving on from each play to the next and try to simulate a real-game environment as much as possible.
“I don’t want to see one play bleed to the next and the next,” Payton said. “It was more of an emphasis on each rep, each play, on to the next one.”