Arians wants to see how young players handle change in San Diego

The Cardinals last spent some training camp time working against a different team in 2012, when they held sessions with the Kansas City Chiefs ahead of their preseason matchup.

That was the season before Bruce Arians arrived, and beginning Tuesday, the Cardinals will once again get some work in with an actual opponent, as they will be in San Diego practicing against the Chargers Tuesday and Wednesday before facing off in a preseason matchup Friday.

“Just how they handle change — change in schedule, change of who we’re going against, different looks,” Arians told Bickley and Marotta on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Monday when asked what he’s hoping to see from his team. “Which is going to be great for them — especially the young players, having to adapt to a different time of practice and different location.

“And just watch them, see how they can handle it. Are they mature enough?”

The fourth-year coach pointed to the team’s regular season schedule, which features two Sunday night matchups, one Monday Night tilt and a Thursday evening affair as reason for needing to be able to handle unusual circumstances. Their games will not all be at 1 p.m., he said.

“You have to be able to adapt to change and still have good practices,” he added.

Things have already changed a little, at least over the last two practices, since the team was kicked out of its University of Phoenix Stadium home due to the Guns N’ Roses concert that is set to take place Monday night. So, instead of working inside of the air-conditioned dome, the team instead went out to an outside field adjacent to the stadium.

Arians said a nice breeze made Sunday morning’s session fairly pleasant, but the heat got to some players Monday morning.

Fortunately for everyone, temperatures in San Diego are expected to be in the high 70s and low 80s the rest of the week, and along with cooler weather there are expected to be cooler heads among the players. Arians does not tolerate fighting, saying it could get you kicked off the team because it gets you kicked out of games.

“There’s no place for that in football at any point in time,” he said.

So, while the players may be on different teams, while working together they are on the same side.

“That’s the one thing, I enjoy working with (Chargers coach) Mike McCoy because we have the same philosophy,” he said. “We wouldn’t practice any different. We wouldn’t hit a guy going over the middle on our team in practice; we won’t hit one of their guys going over the middle. We always stay away from the quarterback.

“It’s creating competition but it’s practice, and we’ve got 180 guys on the same team for three days. Then we’ll play them in the game and all bets are off.”

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