NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The NFLPA is getting out word Monday that it’s reimagining an NFL offseason that would eliminate spring OTAs, trading them for a longer training camp ramp-up to the season, partly to try to reduce injuries.
It sounds nice, but I see several reasons I expect it will be met with resistance by the league, who would have to agree to any such alteration to the calendar.
A bigger offseason followed by a baseball-like spring training would certainly have some advantages. That is the main thing the union is offering now: that lengthier ramp-up to the season would better condition players over a longer period and likely help minimize soft tissue injuries.
But I wonder if their membership would even embrace a plan asking players to basically extend the season and seemingly trade voluntary work for mandatory. Shift what were OTAs in the spring to camp build-up June or July and players would be in for a stretch, even with whatever breaks might be included, of seven months plus rather than a bit over five.
Also big, is the way the NFL currently dominates the year-round sports calendar.
January is the playoffs, February the Super Bowl and the combine, March draft buildup and owners meetings. April the draft and early stages of OTAs, May and June players back on the field in some fashion with the second and third stages of OTAs and minicamps, late July is training camp, August is preseason and September to January is the regular season.
Only five to six weeks in June and July are dead, between the end of minicamps and the start of training camps, where some signings are the only news.
That time being the NFL’s “off” time has been baked into the way things work for a long time. Long-running family vacations, trips and traditions fit into that window. Moving off of it could be a big deal to many traditionalists.
I think the NFL would be highly reluctant to give up any on-field “news” in April, May and June.
Those months sell hope in a major way, where new coaching staffs, free-agent acquisitions and draft picks are put on display and even the very worst teams can show and tell why they are going to be much improved from the year before with little cause for negativity barring injuries.
Also, even if the NFL thought the NFLPA’s idea was brilliant, an unlikely development, the two sides rarely find common ground and simply agree on a change. The union has been working on this and is now putting it out to gauge reaction.
If it really makes a push for it and wants the league to consider it, one of the NFL’s big questions will be, what do we get back?