Why NFL Coaches Want More Offseason Time With Players

Why NFL Coaches Want More Offseason Time With Players

A declining quality of play and inability to build roster depth are two of the reasons cited for wanting to change the limited practice rules that arrived in 2011. Here’s how the league is working to fix it.

By Albert Breer

[mmqb.si.com]

PHOENIX — Publicly, Tuesday’s getaway day at the owners meetings was about three things: 1) Voting on rules proposals; 2) Committee presentations; 3) Getting out of Dodge.

Quietly, the wheels were turning on something that’s just a little higher impact.

Early in the day, Ravens coach John Harbaugh, Bengals coach Marvin Lewis, Saints coach Sean Payton and Panthers coach Ron Rivera held preliminary discussions with league officials on the state of the NFL’s offseason, and its work rules. Later, in a larger session, Cardinals coach Bruce Arians and Browns coach Hue Jackson stood up and made their cases for more time with their players.

And if you polled the 32 coaches here at the Arizona Biltmore en masse, there’s a pretty good chance you’d get unanimous approval on their message. In the name of talent development and quality of play, the time has come, all these coaches believe, to take a hard look at how the NFL is setting up its quiet months.

“There are just simple topics in Phase I, Phase II (of the offseason program),” Payton told me Wednesday morning. “It’s in its early stages of discussion. Hey, these are some things that, if we can have everyone in the room agree, make more sense. It may be just starting training camp on time. Everyone ought to start training camp on the same exact day, except for the Hall of Fame game. Every team.

“And I can’t figure out why this other way is better, but we’re doing it. That’s not a union thing, or a league thing, it’s just not a benefit to anyone that way. But the climate is such now when one person brings it up, the other person says, ‘Well, what am I getting?’ And you’re like, ‘No, this doesn’t benefit anyone.’”

Since the 2011 work stoppage, NFL coaches have significantly less offseason time with their players.

In this week’s Game Plan, coming off the league’s annual meeting, we’ll look at Dan Quinn’s plan for welcoming back his players from the Falcons’ Super Bowl collapse, the plans at quarterback in Houston and Cleveland, and we’ll check in again with the Redskins with the dust having settled from March’s messy breakup with GM Scot McCloughan.

But we’re starting with an issue that you’ll hear more about in the coming months and years, as we draw closer to the 2020 expiration of the collective bargaining agreement. And while it’s one you might not think about, the coaches you watch every Sunday in the fall believe it’s beginning to affect the product you’re seeing between the white lines.

During the 2011 labor negotiation, one big give-back from the owners to players related to work rules. Each team’s offseason program was cut by five weeks, from 14 to nine, with only five of those weeks to include on-field work. The number of hours within that time was reduced. Summer two-a-days were eliminated. Allowable contact was reduced drastically.

The truth is, it really wasn’t much of a sacrifice for the owners—You mean, we get to shut off the lights for another five weeks?—but it flipped upside down the way coaches could run their programs. And while coaches could get creative—ex-Niners coach Jim Harbaugh used to run separate sessions on adjacent fields during camp to maximize reps—that time can’t be made up, which they found was good for no one.

“Our players like when we coach them,” Texans coach Bill O’Brien said. “I had a kid come in the other day. Can I get my playbook? ‘No.’ Can you imagine that? I can’t give him his playbook. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m a firm believer that, and I’m stepping out of my lane a little bit, but I just think for this game to keep going the way it’s going, and it’s an awesome game, we need more time with the players.”

OK, so where is this felt?

The easiest place to start is in player development. Some coaches have groused that developing depth, especially at positions where backups don’t rotate into games (quarterback, offensive line) has gotten infinitely more difficult. Others have said that it’s kept them for finding more good players in the first place.


“I was fortunate, I had Brandon Moore with the New York Jets, and Brandon came in as a defensive lineman,” Jaguars coach Doug Marrone said. “He went out, played in the world league, was on our practice squad, we released him, came back on our practice squad, and we kept working with him, working with him. And all of a sudden, he’s a 10-year starter and a captain for the Jets.

“Brandon was an extremely hard worker, he was an outstanding player with the Jets. I don’t know if a Brandon Moore comes about today, because of a lot of different things at that development stage.”

“You go to training camp and you’ve got one practice and a walkthrough,” added Chargers coach Anthony Lynn, who played seven NFL seasons after going undrafted. “I never would’ve played in this league with one practice and a walkthrough, because I never would’ve been discovered. A lot of players today aren’t getting discovered. We don’t get to see them.

“You can’t evaluate someone in a walkthrough, and then you throw them in a preseason game with the half the reps they normally would’ve gotten. So not only is it affecting the players’ play, we’re missing out on talent. You think (Bronco legend) Terrell Davis would be here today? He was seventh on our depth chart.”

As O’Brien said, many players would rather be with their coaches. But failing that, they have to make up for it, which often costs them well into five figures in training costs (hiring skill-based coaches, renting fields, hiring strength and conditioning coaches, etc.)

“We’ve had guys ask, How come we can’t work out with you guys?” Rivera said. “Those are the rules. We have guys that have to hire people to work them out. We can’t. So they’re spending their money on people working with them, as opposed to working with us. That’s just the way it is.”

Lynn told me that, a few years ago, he went to former players Troy Vincent and Merton Hanks, both working for the league at the time, with notes on all the concerns he’d heard about the impact the work rules were having. Vincent and Hanks told him, in turn, to put a petition together to try and spark reform.

As Lynn recalls, “None of the veteran players wanted to sign it.” The reason? Relations between the players and league had deteriorated to where players were unwilling to put their trust in the clubs.

Conversely, the reason we’re here in the first place is in large part due to, you guessed it, the coaches. Some are even willing to admit it. “We screwed this up,” Marrone said. “Some people abused the time players were in the building.”

So fixing it will take trust. The players have to trust that coaches will stay within the spirit of the rules to back the coaches’ stance, which is necessary because the union will have to be on board with whichever changes do come. The players and league will have to trust one another—we’ve seen that doesn’t come easy—to try to create a mutual benefit here.

But the glimmer of good news here is that the effort is underway to be ready for changes in the next CBA, if not sooner as part of a CBA extension. And the belief is that those changes will mean opportunity for more players across the board, more prepared players on each team and, in the end, a better game.
“I understand all the politics behind it. There’s more than meets the eye, but it’s not American, it’s not common sense, it’s not right,” said Harbaugh. “The league has been great so far, the PA has been great, and I think in the next CBA it’ll get adjusted, I hope in a good way. If we can get past the bickering and the taking of sides—it’s not a poker game here, we’re not hoarding chips.

“Why don’t we just sit down and say, what’s good for everyone involved here? It’d probably take about an hour to figure the whole thing out, if everybody put agendas aside.”

That, of course, is easier said than done in these circles. But after this week, it’s clear they’re trying.