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| Alright! The lockout is OVER! Now what?? 1 |
As soon as I hopped in my car and tuned my radio in to the sports talk station, I knew the lockout was over, before actually hearing those words. How? I heard about the possibilities of Kevin Kolb going to Arizona and Donovan McNabb to Minnesota and Vince Young or Kyle Orton to Miami. I could not have cared less whether there was any substance to those rumors or not. The fact that the airwaves were dominated with possible impact transactions as opposed to union protocol, labor laws, and negotiating tactics told me that the latter was not the top story. The only way it could NOT be the top story is if it was over!!!
I think the first thing that the public will observe, upon the lifting of the lockout, is a rapid fire of completed player transactions. The first wave that many will see is the signing of undrafted rookie free agents, followed almost immediately by the resigning of free agents by their current teams. Very soon after, we will see free agents looking for a new home inking deals with new teams. We will likely see a record number of signings within a 24/48/72/etc hour period after the beginning of free agency signings.
The sports media have done a great job of selling the public on the excitement and madness that the public can expect to witness in the coming week. Of course, the intent is to keep fans at the edge of their seats, tuning in and logging on frequently to see who goes where. It sounds like a lot of chaos for organizations, which may seem fun for fans. However, I think the media sold the myth of frenzied, rapid fire free agency madness to the public in doses far greater than the executives and coaches at the actual NFL clubs will experience.
It is absolutely true that free agency signings will probably occur at the most rapid rate we have ever witnessed. And it is true that many members of the press and the public will feel a sense of chaos and struggling to keep up with and anticipate the moves that are made. The teams? Not so much….
While teams and players were forbidden from communicating during the lockout, player agents were free to do as they pleased. Everyone actually involved in the process has been fully aware of this since the lockout began. Like in free agency periods in the past, teams were acutely aware of their needs and had a short list of target players to fill those needs, rookies, veterans, current players, or otherwise. What the public could not observe, during the lockout, is the gamesmanship, appealing to the public through the media, and the step-by-step developments, particularly with high profile free agents, which we have been able to observe with greater transparency in previous years. In short, I do not believe that the end result of free agent negotiations and signings will be dramatically different than it would have been in the absence of the lockout.
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| NFL free agency negotiations in 2011 are going to make speed dating look like long term relationships. 2 |
TRAINING CAMP – NO TRAINING WHEELS
Where we will be able to observe significant differences between this year and other years is the process and structure of NFL training camps. Every year, rookies are drafted and signed to compete for one of the 53 coveted final roster spots. Every year, some of the rookies are kept and some of the veterans are displaced because of the rookie acquisitions.
What is different about 2011 is that there have been no offseason voluntary organized teams activities (OTAs) between the beginning of the offseason and the beginning of training camp. This will give veteran players a tremendous advantage over their rookie counterparts. Veterans will be in training camp, next week, already having had the advantage of NFL game experience and, in most cases, having executed the strategic coaching schemes, and knowing the playbook.
Veteran players have never had a greater buffer between themselves and a pink slip due to an excelling rookie than they will in this coming training camp and preseason. Players with limited game experience who do not make the 53-man roster could earn one of eight practice squad spots. The competition will likely be more intense than ever for those due to the inability of rookies to prepare to compete for 53-man active roster spots.
The veteran advantage extends to the management and coaches of the teams themselves. Teams with greater veteran composition and greater continuity of composition from the 2010 season will be able to hit the ground running more readily that a team with more new players and more players with less experience. I fully expect the teams that both experienced success in 2010 and kept more of their key players to dominate in September and to have an advantage over other teams in playoff positioning.
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| Sorry, rookies! No training wheels for you! 3 |
In the short term, I think we are going to witness a bigger gap between the haves and have-nots in the NFL than we usually see. The rich will stay rich, so to speak. I think that we are going to see more dominating performances (i.e. blowouts) in the 2011 season, particularly in the earlier weeks of the season. I think we will also be “treated” to a lot of bad, sloppy football, with great potential for the comedic folly highlight reels among the lower tiered teams in the NFL due to the compromised ability to prepare for the season and build team chemistry in the offseason.
In the long run, due to the 10 year length of this collective bargaining agreement, I think that fans will be able to enjoy uninterrupted football without the shadow of a labor stoppage looming over America’s pastime. Remember, the prior agreement under which the owners an players were operating, itself, was an 11th hour deal, cut in 2006, to avoid the chain of events that lead to the 2011 lockout. Owners opted out of the deal in 2008 and, for the last three years, the possibilities and eventual realities of an uncapped 2010 season and a labor stoppage came to fruition. This current agreement is a 10 year agreement, running through the 2020 season, and does not include an opt-out clause. So ends the seemingly continuous band-aid upon band-aid approach to the labor agreement in which the NFL engaged for the last five years.
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| Let's hope that the incompetence we may see this season won't extend to the refs. 4 |
AND NOW, WITHOUT FURTHER ADIEU…FOOTBALL!!!!
At the end of the day, all that the fans truly care about is watching football. While the nearly 5 month work stoppage, the longest in league history, took many fans and media members through more of the finer points of labor law and labor negotiations than most cared to ever digest, the payoff to the fan will be worth the cost of anxiety over whether there would be an entire 2011 NFL season. It is all over and we will all be much older and at different stages in life before this current agreement expires. Goodbye collective bargaining and hello FOOTBALL!!!
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1) Image from denizen86.blogspot.com
2) Image from vegspeeddating.com
3) Image from journalnet.com
4) Image from cockytalk.com
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