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As the official television partner of the Washington Commanders, we are with the team every step of the way as they prepare for the upcoming season. The commanders were on the practice field today for those organized team activities, otherwise known as it's way too long, we'll call them OTAAS. Yeah. So, this is the first time we've seen free agents and rookies on the same field with commanders vets. Our John Duran joins us live tonight from Ashurn. And John, we know that these practices are not mandatory, but a lot of folks still showed up. Yeah, Lorenzo, for veterans, these are voluntary, but the commanders had its full roster on staff on hand rather for practice number one. That even includes
guys working their way back from injury like Trey Amos, Bill Crosky, Merritt, Dorren Armstrong to name a few. Not practicing, but they were present. That wasn't the case a year ago. The team says having a showing like this can go a long ways towards building chemistry. This is what it's all about. You know, that's why I'm glad we got all the guys here. OTAAS is this where you started off, man. This where you lay the brick. You know what I'm saying? In a house, you got to have a strong foundation and this the foundation right now. And we building that up, man. A house with some of its strongest pillars already in place, including left tackle Laramie Tonsel and wide receiver Terry McLaren, who were not present for OTAAS last year.
I mean, I you love Terry. Like, Terry is a big piece of not just this offense, but the locker room. Uh, so I mean even to have guys around, you know, LT was here and Terry have those guys around and be able to build that connection, that chemistry, just everybody, man, it means a lot. How can we form the best bond possible right now so that way when it comes to later in the season, we're not worried about any potential cracks in culture. We're not worried about uh did we have a good foundation set in the offseason. Um, we're just building those daily habits right now. Washington's new offensive and defensive coordinators bring in brand new systems, leveling the playing field for commanders players, new and old.
When you put in new systems, they're all really on the same page now. So, it's not like, you know, one person's been in the same system five years and say, "Yeah, I know all that." So having like a collective group share and um that helps because there's not a lot of separation between where the rookies are or new player is on the knowledge of the system compared to a current commander veteran. Today was the first practice of the first session of OTAA practices. These will run through Friday. Media is not welcome the next couple of days. So, the next time we will see the commanders out on the practice field will be Tuesday,
which starts the second session of OTAA practices, guys. Uh, long story short, we're we're a ways away from late July and training camp. We sure are. But I feel like we've moved all the way forward because we have such a great showing. I mean, quite frankly, we know what happened last year and then we saw what happened last year. And I'm sure everybody wants to not repeat what happened last year. This year, we don't. Good to see them working together
