After missing time in training camp, Commanders center Nick Allegretti is racing to master the silent cadence with QB Jayden Daniels ahead of Week 1. | Philip Hughes | HTTR4LIFE LLC
The Washington Commanders
are a team heading into Week 1
with plenty left to clean up, but center Nick Allegretti
believes one specific detail matters above all others between now and the Philadelphia
game. Allegretti thinks the silent cadence is the biggest thing he and Jayden Daniels
should be mastering before the opener. This is a portion of their work that has gone by the wayside, with Allegretti sidelined
for most of camp with a calf injury.
With the team spending much of camp installing new offensive coordinator David Blough
's system, verbal cadence became the norm. That approach has changed now that they have two road games to start the season. "I'd say probably the silent cadence," Allegretti said. "In training camp, you work it occasionally. As you're installing an offense, you want to be in your comfortable cadence, so you got verbal 100% of the time in training camp. But with these extra couple of practices and the first two weeks being silent on the road, we've been pretty much silent cadence since Saturday." Washington
will open the season with NFC East rivalry games on the road in Philly and Dallas
, making communication in loud environments an issue they must learn to deal with.
The silent cadence is essentially built on timing and being completely synchronized with one another. The center-quarterback exchange has to be the most important relationship on the football field, yet it often gets forgotten. The rest of the line can rely on visual or physical cues that react to keying on the ball without alerting the defense. The issue is that one mistimed movement can create a false start, leave a lineman late out of his stance, or give Philadelphia's defensive front an advantage before the play even starts.
All of this would have been covered extensively had Allegretti
been a full participant this summer, which makes the next week of practice critical. To make things even more difficult, Allegretti is, of course, transitioning to the center position
after spending most of his career acting as a utility guard who provides patchwork on the interior. The control Washington has spent much of the offseason program giving to Daniels only works when the players around him can operate normally when crowd noise kills verbal communication.
Make no mistake about it, Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia is exactly the type of hostile environment where a weak silent count could be a fatal flaw, with their defensive front ready to pounce on any mistakes. After months of installing the new offense, one of Week 1's biggest priorities will be much smaller and involves making sure Daniels
can communicate with his center when neither of them can hear the other.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/nfl/commanders/onsi as Nick Allegretti Identifies Washington's No. 1 Priority Before Week 1 - Commanders Daily .
