Colquitt's 1st blog of the offseason!!!

[KChiefsQT]

Colquitt’s Coffin Corner: Workouts Begin

By Dustin Colquitt
Warpaint Illustrated Contributor
Posted Mar 24, 2008


I’ve just been trying to get back into shape and that started at the end of February. I try to take several weeks off, and I did that, and now I’m trying to swim a little bit, use the elliptical and right now just spending a lot of time with family.

Once the offseason workouts come up, the team is pretty much at Arrowhead every day working out, getting faster or stronger and getting our bodies back in the condition they were during the season. Getting back to see my teammates at OTAs will be fun. There are a lot of new guys that I’m looking forward to meeting. When you start a new year and you have a lot of new people in there is kind of a new energy and you figure out who the new team leaders are.

OTAs are voluntary, but if you don’t come you’re pretty much shunned out. I don’t know why they call them voluntary workouts, because you have to go. You get to meet people, work with them, and get to know another side of them than just the football side. That’s fun to do because you end up hanging at Arrowhead all day and getting to know each other.

I get into media reports during the offseason a little bit, because I want to know the guys who are coming in. With special teams, the third aspect of the game, it’s directly related to the guys we get out of free agency, depending on how deep our roster is. If you don’t have a very deep roster, the backups are going to be playing the majority of the special teams roles, so I have to pay attention and figure out where I’m going to be punting this year.

Last year, when we had a new cover unit with eight new guys, I had to situation punt. Sometimes I couldn’t punt directionally based on the guys that we had out there, until they learned their position. So I follow closely because it directly affects me first, and then the offense and defense with the backups.

I don’t set goals this early. I do that during training camp before our first preseason game. I set up all the stuff that I want to accomplish and all the things I need to accomplish. Coach Priefer is going to want me to directional punt more and we’re going to have to figure out what we do with the guys that come in.

Are we going to have a brand new coverage unit again? Is it going to take a couple weeks where I need to have a high quality punt every time? That’s what I’m striving for, anyway. Once we get used to our roles on the team, you can kind of go further with that.

As far as the blog this year, I just kind of like to give back. This is something I’ve done since I was at Tennessee and now at Kansas City. I always want to be out in the community and I love the fans.

I’ve been at radio shows and TV programs and people have come up to me out of the stands and given me things like hand-carved Arrowheads. You can tell Chiefs fans genuinely love this team so Colquitt’s Coffin Corner is a good thing. We’ve had a good response from it.

I was at this professional athletes outreach in Fort Worth and I ended up getting a car and driving 45 minutes into Dallas and seeing Clark Hunt. One of the first things he said was, “I love that blog, I read it all the time,” so to have somebody like that reading it, we’ve reached out to a lot of people.

Hopefully you’ll keep reading and I’m definitely going to keep offering the blue-collar view from inside the locker room, because I’m just a country boy.

See you next week!

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