BillsFever
06-25-2003, 05:44 PM
There's mounting dissatisfaction among players and agents regarding the perception that teams are waiting longer and longer each year to sign their draft picks.
As one league source told us, "Whether it's a negotiating tactic or just plain laziness, it's getting more and more frustrating trying to get some of these deals done."
In the later rounds of the draft, players are slotted based on the prior year's position. "Most of these deals can be done by a guy with a lobotomy," one source said.
So why the delay? One possibility is that the rookie doesn't count against the team's roster limit until he is signed. Thus, whenever a rookie inks a deal, the team has to cut loose someone else. By pushing back the date on which the rookie is signed, the team gets to have more warm bodies during offseason workouts.
Still, the players want to get their signing bonuses, especially since most (if not all) of them already are essentially at work, learning the schemes and participating in practice without pads.
Though the NFLPA generally has done nothing while the word "voluntary" has evaporated from the new practice of subjecting players to 10-plus weeks of offseason drills, the union probably should take a look at the question of whether some teams are unfairly slowing down the rookie signing process in order to keep more guys around for these March-to-June practice sessions.
http://profootballtalk.com/rumormill.htm
As one league source told us, "Whether it's a negotiating tactic or just plain laziness, it's getting more and more frustrating trying to get some of these deals done."
In the later rounds of the draft, players are slotted based on the prior year's position. "Most of these deals can be done by a guy with a lobotomy," one source said.
So why the delay? One possibility is that the rookie doesn't count against the team's roster limit until he is signed. Thus, whenever a rookie inks a deal, the team has to cut loose someone else. By pushing back the date on which the rookie is signed, the team gets to have more warm bodies during offseason workouts.
Still, the players want to get their signing bonuses, especially since most (if not all) of them already are essentially at work, learning the schemes and participating in practice without pads.
Though the NFLPA generally has done nothing while the word "voluntary" has evaporated from the new practice of subjecting players to 10-plus weeks of offseason drills, the union probably should take a look at the question of whether some teams are unfairly slowing down the rookie signing process in order to keep more guys around for these March-to-June practice sessions.
http://profootballtalk.com/rumormill.htm