Chapter 709: Ready
Time flies, and the four weeks of preseason games have all come to an end.
After the game against the San Diego Chargers, back in the locker room, all the players were bustling around, discussing the just-ended game, teasing each other, and joking with each other... This might be their last moment of ease.
Because after the regular season begins, every win or loss won't be as insignificant as it is in the preseason, so their moods will naturally be different. And even more so because after they leave the locker room, the team will begin to officially cut players, reducing the ninety-man roster to fifty-three. A full thirty-seven players will leave the team. The competition for the practice squad is also fierce.
In the four preseason games, they finished with two wins and two losses, which wasn't great but wasn't bad either. Of course, the most important thing was the tactical drills and the adjustment of their form. If they could achieve their goals, even if they lost the game, it didn't matter. But on the other hand, if they won the game but the content the coaching staff wanted to evaluate was still not achieved, then they couldn't be happy.
Lu Ke left his noisy and cheerful teammates and sat alone on a bench nearby. The new season was about to begin, and he needed to examine all his gains from the entire offseason.
After the offseason began, the daily training tasks were updated in all aspects.
As expected, the calculation cycle was extended from two weeks to one month, not a calendar month but a four-week cycle, forming one cycle after another.
Lu Ke had already guessed this change. An update after the first season ended was far below his expectations. Moreover, this time, the daily training tasks had a further change: in addition to being able to rest on game days, the day after a game day was also a rest day, and the daily training tasks were cleared.
After asking Little Seven, Lu Ke learned that because his physical talents had already made a fundamental breakthrough, the changes that daily training could bring were gradually becoming narrower. If he trained excessively, it could easily cause physical wear and tear and increase his chances of injury. Although Lu Ke had stacked his injury resistance rating to 100, if he was hit like Ted Ginn in the NFC Championship, or was hit by a truck, he would still get injured or even die.
With this consideration, the system once again adjusted the daily tasks.
This also meant that the training cycle was extended, but the training workload was actually reduced. However, the quality and quantity of each day's daily training tasks were still there. Just looking at Lu Ke's training intensity during the offseason was enough to give a glimpse of the iceberg. After the regular season started, the training intensity would definitely decrease, but it was probably not going to be much different.
In the end, by the end of the preseason, the daily training tasks had a total of six basic points.
Compared to the other types of tasks, the gains from the daily training tasks were indeed not many, and the increase was indeed limited. But in the past two years, the accumulated training had quietly changed Lu Ke's body in terms of his physical fitness. More importantly, it gave his teammates a fixed impression, providing an effective cover for Lu Ke's rapid improvement in strength.
Now, the daily training tasks were more like a part of a professional player's life and didn't show how to get the basic points provided by the system. The system was like a professional personal trainer, tailoring all the training content for Lu Ke and helping him develop training habits.
Throughout the entire offseason, there were no special tasks or hidden tasks. The only extra task was the objective task that appeared after the system was updated.
"Objective task: The Offseason's Hard Training."
In simple terms, it was to train continuously without interruption, accumulating day after day, and pushing for a qualitative change with a quantitative one. With the encouragement of the Offseason Training Pack and the Development Pack, Lu Ke and Logan persevered and completed all the training.
In fact, it wasn't just Lu Ke. Under Lu Ke's leadership, in addition to Logan, Marcus, Watt, Curry, and others also persevered and completed all the training in the offseason. Their overall strength had a great increase. It could be seen in the preseason that Logan and Marcus were upgraded versions, and the results of the offseason were obvious.
It was a pity that there was only one Development Pack. Otherwise, Lu Ke would have dragged the entire offensive line over and trained them all.
Undoubtedly, the reward for the objective task was generous. "For ten consecutive days, basic points +1; for twenty consecutive days, basic points +3; for thirty consecutive days, basic points +6; for forty consecutive days, basic points +10..."
If he could continue to train without interruption, the basic points could be stacked cyclically. The problem was that the offseason couldn't last forever.
The entire offseason training cycle was officially calculated from the day Lu Ke went to UCLA to start training and continued until the voluntary training camp officially started.
In other words, according to the system's judgment, when the voluntary training camp officially began, the offseason had already ended.
Although all teams stipulated that the voluntary training camp was completely "voluntary," from the overall situation of the league, tactical training had already started in the voluntary training camp, which meant that the team's preparations for the new season had already begun. Generally, the starting players would also participate in the voluntary training camp.
In the end, Lu Ke's offseason training lasted for a full ninety-nine days. It was just over three months. But according to the objective task's reward rules, he could only stack up to ninety days because he hadn't reached one hundred and five days yet, which also annoyed Lu Ke. If he had known this, he would have returned to North America earlier after the Pro Bowl and started his offseason preparations.
But there was no "if."
Now that he thought about it, the relaxation time after the Pro Bowl was also crucial for Lu Ke. After being on edge for more than eighteen months, he really needed to relax for a while. Taking a break to sharpen the axe doesn't delay the work of chopping wood, and this was the same principle.
So, after the objective task was completed, Lu Ke received a total of twenty-one basic points.
The daily tasks and objective tasks were all cleared, and the basic points reached twenty-seven. This was the most abundant harvest of basic points outside of the settlement after the regular season ended. It was as if he was holding a heavy weapon in his hand and could be fully armed to sweep away all obstacles.
Everyone says that the offseason is crucial for any professional player, and if used wisely, it can bring about a complete transformation. Before, Lu Ke had deeply felt this with his actions. Now, Lu Ke felt this with concrete numbers.
Before officially adding the points, Lu Ke briefly scanned his attribute panel. After breaking through the bottleneck last time, although his main energy had been focused on tactical training during this time, with the new playbook and quarterback skill training taking up most of his time, his strength still increased by one point, from 72 to 73.
It wasn't a lot, but it was precious.
Then, Lu Ke seriously began to think about how he should make full use of these twenty-seven basic points to start his new journey in the 2012 season.
This was a new season and a new beginning. This also meant that his strengths needed to maintain their level, while his weaknesses needed to be improved in time to bring surprises. This was especially true for a rookie player. After the grind of his rookie season, all teams were probably repeatedly studying Lu Ke's game films and then formulating corresponding plays. He needed to improve.
First, his physical fitness.
After a whole offseason of training, his physical fitness had now been raised to 83 and had broken through the bottleneck. But at this time, Lu Ke still added seven points in one go, raising this weakness—which was once a weakness—to a full 90 points.
The main reason? The Bountygate scandal during the offseason! This once again sounded the alarm for Lu Ke.
Although given Lu Ke's body type, muscles, and talent, even if his physical fitness reached a perfect 100, he and Cam Newton would still be two different types. Even with a perfect physical fitness score, the styles and types they presented would be completely different. The genetic attributes of different races would inevitably be different.
But one thing was for sure, Lu Ke's physical fitness was no longer a category to worry about.
In addition, the breakthrough in physical fitness brought a little ripple effect. His explosiveness and acceleration each increased by one point. It could be seen that after breaking through the bottleneck in the offseason, the physical attributes were steadily increasing, so this major breakthrough did not bring about a comprehensive change.
Secondly, his fake throws.
This skill was always Lu Ke's weakness, and it was magnified in the two playoff games. Now that he finally had the opportunity, Lu Ke didn't hesitate to add his points to this category. He directly added ten basic points to his 50, reaching 60 points, passing the benchmark for the first time ever.
After adding the points, a warm current flowed through his limbs. It wasn't intense, but it was comfortable, as if he were soaking in a hot spring. The change brought by the ten basic points quickly subsided again.
Finally, his ball-carrying ability.
In fact, pocket footwork and ball-carrying are a combination of skills. In addition to running with the ball, evasion, blocking, juking, and faking are all closely related, but other skills are more directly related to running backs. Only ball-carrying is the most direct embodiment of a quarterback's pocket movement.
So, Lu Ke added all the remaining ten basic points to it, changing his score from 71 to 81. This also meant that Lu Ke's ability to survive in the pocket was greatly improved, giving him more space to choose his passes.
The twenty-seven basic points were once again distributed, focusing on three categories and bringing about a change that raised them to a new level. This would also become the starting point for Lu Ke's new look in the new season.
"Bambi." While deep in thought and before he could fully feel the change brought by the great increase in his ball-carrying stats, a voice called out in the locker room. He looked up and saw Harbaugh, who motioned with a serious face. "Bambi, come here."
🗒️NOTE:
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MistaQuartz
Explore up to 30 chapters in advance!