igtmfo
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Greets. I glommed the following two excellent stys from a Bears board. First written by an agent, second by a guy who worked for the Packers.
The practice squad shuffle
Jack Bechta, The Bleacher Report
Getting cut isn’t the end of the line for some players.
On Saturday at 4 p.m. eastern time, when rosters become fixed at 53 players, there will be about 700 players competing for 256 spots on practice squads. Those 450 players who don’t get signed will be on the outside looking in, wondering why they didn’t land spots. Teams that were not satisfied with their castoffs will search the wire for players they attempted to pick up after the draft but missed out on in April. Agents and team pitchmen such as GMs and head coaches will try to convince players to stay put their practice squads with promises of seeing time on the 53-man roster in the near future.
For many undrafted free agents who were overlooked on draft day and had to put up with what I call the “worst two hours in football” after the draft -- when teams make pitches to players and agents like used car salesman with promises of opportunity -- the process can start all over again. But this time it’s done over a 24-hour period.
Those coveted few rookies who had great camps, turned heads and impressed in preseason games will be asked to remain at the hotel as the teams promise a practice squad spot with the possibility of being activated within a few weeks. It’s a mixed bag of emotions for a player who’s been cut but is now asked to stay and practice with the team for a quarter of the minimum salary. That same player, however, may get offers from other teams to join their practice squad.
There’s a “grass is greener” mentality to this process by both agents and teams in which a fresh start for the player seems like a better idea than going back to the team that just cut him. And so, it’s decision time again.
Typically, I encourage a player to stay put if a team offers a spot. He just spent five weeks learning a position, terminology, a playbook and a new system, so most of the time it’s not in his best interests to go elsewhere and start all over again. During the regular season, practice is 90 percent game prep with very little time spent on player development. However, I do explore all options for my player by not making a definitive decision until the dust has settled. I will always take a 53-man spot with a new team over a practice squad spot with the current team
For positions like wide receiver or tight end, I may be more open-minded to a new team’s practice squad since that player gets to show what he can do every day against the first team defense. It’s a little tougher for an interior lineman to make his mark during the regular season on the practice squad.
Every now and then, I’ll have a client who gets cut and is not claimed but is sought after by a few teams so desperate to have him that they will either pay a premium over the practice squad minimum or swear an oath that he will be activated within three weeks. I once had a player, Damien Robinson, who was told by the Eagles that he had made the team, then was cut the next day with the promise that he would be active the following week. I call that “the head fake.” The coaches had a love-hate relationship with Damien; they liked his potential but didn’t trust him yet. They cut him a few days after he made the 53, put him on the practice squad and demanded that he stay put and work harder. After a short time, I thought there was too much damage done to the relationship so I moved him to the Tampa Bay active roster, where he quickly became a starter.
There will be a lot more going on behind the scenes this weekend as players rely on their agents to make good decisions and put them in places where they can succeed.
------------
The harsh truth about cutdown day
Andrew Brandt, National Football Post
This is the toughest weekend on the NFL calendar. ...
Unless they have no heart and have become immune to emotion through the cold business of the National Football League, this weekend is the hardest weekend of the year for front offices and coaches to manage from a personal as well as professional stance. Approximately 25 percent of the players who have been working for them for months will now be pushed into a flooded market with hundreds of other players looking for a handful of open NFL jobs. By Labor Day, the labor force in the NFL will have shrunk by a quarter.
Cutdown day also shows the symmetry, or lack thereof, of teams’ front offices. Every team tries to have the three areas of the football operation – coaching, personnel and contract/cap management – on the same page, but inevitably one of the three prongs wields more influence. The makeup of the final roster is a defining moment for the power source of the team because these decisions can have lasting effects for years.
Coaches tend to favor older players familiar with their systems and more dependable in tense situations. They will sacrifice higher upside to have a better insurance policy in place.
Personnel staffs tend to prefer young players they have brought in to develop. They fear the prospect of those players playing for someone else after the investment made in them. They advocate patience with draft choices, even from previous years, rather than pushing them farther down the depth chart or off the team. Also, younger players usually play special teams; veteran players are more reluctant to do so.
Cap and contract managers play advisory roles in the process, mapping out scenarios of cap room and cash commitments with different rosters. I would often have up to 10 roster scenarios and the cap and cash commitments associated with each. Cap/contract managers are also responsible for monitoring the risk on vested players, for whom the team is fully responsible for the year’s salary if the player is on the roster the first weekend of the season. And, of course, cap/contract managers have to allow for budgets for practice squad, injured players, injury settlements, injury replacements, planned contract extensions, planned earned incentives, etc. With the rules changing this year due to no cap in 2010, these forecasts are more important than ever.
Injury discussions are the most vital conversations of the weekend. The type and length of injuries of players on the roster bubble are debated intensely as roster decisions have to be made that affect whether these players will be kept on the roster, released, released with an injury settlement or placed on season-ending injured reserve. For players with four-to-six week injuries, such as MCL strains, high-ankle sprains and hamstring injuries, these decisions are especially difficult.
This is also the time when players are placed on reserve/injured with injuries that are, uh, season-ending. Officially, the team doctor has to certify that the injury is “major,” which qualifies it for a minimum six-week time frame and can leave the upper time limit indefinite. As to confirming the veracity of such injuries, the league has spot-checkers who appear at team headquarters to check on them. However, this seldom happens; in my nine years with the Packers, I encountered one spot-checker.
As to the underbelly/unknown side of what really happens with injuries, there are situations that no one would believe unless they were there. I was always amazed that on the morning after the last preseason game, there would suddenly be a couple of injuries to players who were about to be released. These players checked out fine after the game but had mysteriously developed injuries that would require them to receive their pay over the coming weeks or months (teams can’t release injured players; if they do, they’re subject to grievances). Tim Couch, the former top pick in the 1999 NFL Draft, was a player who never solicited treatment in his time in Green Bay but ended up filing a grievance for his elbow. I always wondered what happened to these players between the last preseason game and cutdown time that would eventually earn them tens, even hundreds, of thousands of dollars? I’m not saying…I’m just saying...
After all the debates and harangues in cutting the roster to 53, which usually include a more detailed discussion of what the game-day roster of 45 will look like, a team’s front office and coaches take a deep breath -- and then it’s time to scour the league waiver wire for players who are better than the ones they have, sparking more debate about the 45- and 53-man rosters.
A staple of cutdown weekend is trade talk. The usual conversation between teams involves which players may be available and the bluffing about how many teams may be interested if the team were to release the player. The good personnel staffs are able to sift through the posturing and have conviction about the players they want and what they are willing to do to acquire them. The vast majority of players who are discussed are eventually released, and the majority of trades that occur are in exchange for the minimum allowable trade compensation, a “seventh if” pick – the trading team gets a seventh rounder if the traded player is on the 45 or 53-man roster for a certain number of games – in a future year.
This is a tough weekend. Hundreds of players have been working intensely for months, many since January, doing everything the team has asked them to do. Many of them had little or no chance of making the team from the moment they signed but clung to dreams of turning enough heads to get a shot. Now a member of the personnel staff is calling them, asking them to come by and start the process of handing in playbooks and taking exit physicals with trainers.
Almost half the group that assembled five weeks ago for training camp in any NFL city is gone. Although around 250 of those players will come back Monday as practice squad players, there is no time in the NFL calendar that displays the true cold, hard nature of the business than this one. As I’ve said to dozens of players, it’s the numbers; there just aren’t enough spots. It’s not personal. Even when I said it, I knew it was a cliché. But what else can you say?
Enjoy the Labor Day weekend, despite the shrunken NFL labor force.
Be sure to get the best fantasy football products anywhere here at the National Football Post. Follow me on Twitter: adbrandt.
The practice squad shuffle
Jack Bechta, The Bleacher Report
Getting cut isn’t the end of the line for some players.
On Saturday at 4 p.m. eastern time, when rosters become fixed at 53 players, there will be about 700 players competing for 256 spots on practice squads. Those 450 players who don’t get signed will be on the outside looking in, wondering why they didn’t land spots. Teams that were not satisfied with their castoffs will search the wire for players they attempted to pick up after the draft but missed out on in April. Agents and team pitchmen such as GMs and head coaches will try to convince players to stay put their practice squads with promises of seeing time on the 53-man roster in the near future.
For many undrafted free agents who were overlooked on draft day and had to put up with what I call the “worst two hours in football” after the draft -- when teams make pitches to players and agents like used car salesman with promises of opportunity -- the process can start all over again. But this time it’s done over a 24-hour period.
Those coveted few rookies who had great camps, turned heads and impressed in preseason games will be asked to remain at the hotel as the teams promise a practice squad spot with the possibility of being activated within a few weeks. It’s a mixed bag of emotions for a player who’s been cut but is now asked to stay and practice with the team for a quarter of the minimum salary. That same player, however, may get offers from other teams to join their practice squad.
There’s a “grass is greener” mentality to this process by both agents and teams in which a fresh start for the player seems like a better idea than going back to the team that just cut him. And so, it’s decision time again.
Typically, I encourage a player to stay put if a team offers a spot. He just spent five weeks learning a position, terminology, a playbook and a new system, so most of the time it’s not in his best interests to go elsewhere and start all over again. During the regular season, practice is 90 percent game prep with very little time spent on player development. However, I do explore all options for my player by not making a definitive decision until the dust has settled. I will always take a 53-man spot with a new team over a practice squad spot with the current team
For positions like wide receiver or tight end, I may be more open-minded to a new team’s practice squad since that player gets to show what he can do every day against the first team defense. It’s a little tougher for an interior lineman to make his mark during the regular season on the practice squad.
Every now and then, I’ll have a client who gets cut and is not claimed but is sought after by a few teams so desperate to have him that they will either pay a premium over the practice squad minimum or swear an oath that he will be activated within three weeks. I once had a player, Damien Robinson, who was told by the Eagles that he had made the team, then was cut the next day with the promise that he would be active the following week. I call that “the head fake.” The coaches had a love-hate relationship with Damien; they liked his potential but didn’t trust him yet. They cut him a few days after he made the 53, put him on the practice squad and demanded that he stay put and work harder. After a short time, I thought there was too much damage done to the relationship so I moved him to the Tampa Bay active roster, where he quickly became a starter.
There will be a lot more going on behind the scenes this weekend as players rely on their agents to make good decisions and put them in places where they can succeed.
------------
The harsh truth about cutdown day
Andrew Brandt, National Football Post
This is the toughest weekend on the NFL calendar. ...
Unless they have no heart and have become immune to emotion through the cold business of the National Football League, this weekend is the hardest weekend of the year for front offices and coaches to manage from a personal as well as professional stance. Approximately 25 percent of the players who have been working for them for months will now be pushed into a flooded market with hundreds of other players looking for a handful of open NFL jobs. By Labor Day, the labor force in the NFL will have shrunk by a quarter.
Cutdown day also shows the symmetry, or lack thereof, of teams’ front offices. Every team tries to have the three areas of the football operation – coaching, personnel and contract/cap management – on the same page, but inevitably one of the three prongs wields more influence. The makeup of the final roster is a defining moment for the power source of the team because these decisions can have lasting effects for years.
Coaches tend to favor older players familiar with their systems and more dependable in tense situations. They will sacrifice higher upside to have a better insurance policy in place.
Personnel staffs tend to prefer young players they have brought in to develop. They fear the prospect of those players playing for someone else after the investment made in them. They advocate patience with draft choices, even from previous years, rather than pushing them farther down the depth chart or off the team. Also, younger players usually play special teams; veteran players are more reluctant to do so.
Cap and contract managers play advisory roles in the process, mapping out scenarios of cap room and cash commitments with different rosters. I would often have up to 10 roster scenarios and the cap and cash commitments associated with each. Cap/contract managers are also responsible for monitoring the risk on vested players, for whom the team is fully responsible for the year’s salary if the player is on the roster the first weekend of the season. And, of course, cap/contract managers have to allow for budgets for practice squad, injured players, injury settlements, injury replacements, planned contract extensions, planned earned incentives, etc. With the rules changing this year due to no cap in 2010, these forecasts are more important than ever.
Injury discussions are the most vital conversations of the weekend. The type and length of injuries of players on the roster bubble are debated intensely as roster decisions have to be made that affect whether these players will be kept on the roster, released, released with an injury settlement or placed on season-ending injured reserve. For players with four-to-six week injuries, such as MCL strains, high-ankle sprains and hamstring injuries, these decisions are especially difficult.
This is also the time when players are placed on reserve/injured with injuries that are, uh, season-ending. Officially, the team doctor has to certify that the injury is “major,” which qualifies it for a minimum six-week time frame and can leave the upper time limit indefinite. As to confirming the veracity of such injuries, the league has spot-checkers who appear at team headquarters to check on them. However, this seldom happens; in my nine years with the Packers, I encountered one spot-checker.
As to the underbelly/unknown side of what really happens with injuries, there are situations that no one would believe unless they were there. I was always amazed that on the morning after the last preseason game, there would suddenly be a couple of injuries to players who were about to be released. These players checked out fine after the game but had mysteriously developed injuries that would require them to receive their pay over the coming weeks or months (teams can’t release injured players; if they do, they’re subject to grievances). Tim Couch, the former top pick in the 1999 NFL Draft, was a player who never solicited treatment in his time in Green Bay but ended up filing a grievance for his elbow. I always wondered what happened to these players between the last preseason game and cutdown time that would eventually earn them tens, even hundreds, of thousands of dollars? I’m not saying…I’m just saying...
After all the debates and harangues in cutting the roster to 53, which usually include a more detailed discussion of what the game-day roster of 45 will look like, a team’s front office and coaches take a deep breath -- and then it’s time to scour the league waiver wire for players who are better than the ones they have, sparking more debate about the 45- and 53-man rosters.
A staple of cutdown weekend is trade talk. The usual conversation between teams involves which players may be available and the bluffing about how many teams may be interested if the team were to release the player. The good personnel staffs are able to sift through the posturing and have conviction about the players they want and what they are willing to do to acquire them. The vast majority of players who are discussed are eventually released, and the majority of trades that occur are in exchange for the minimum allowable trade compensation, a “seventh if” pick – the trading team gets a seventh rounder if the traded player is on the 45 or 53-man roster for a certain number of games – in a future year.
This is a tough weekend. Hundreds of players have been working intensely for months, many since January, doing everything the team has asked them to do. Many of them had little or no chance of making the team from the moment they signed but clung to dreams of turning enough heads to get a shot. Now a member of the personnel staff is calling them, asking them to come by and start the process of handing in playbooks and taking exit physicals with trainers.
Almost half the group that assembled five weeks ago for training camp in any NFL city is gone. Although around 250 of those players will come back Monday as practice squad players, there is no time in the NFL calendar that displays the true cold, hard nature of the business than this one. As I’ve said to dozens of players, it’s the numbers; there just aren’t enough spots. It’s not personal. Even when I said it, I knew it was a cliché. But what else can you say?
Enjoy the Labor Day weekend, despite the shrunken NFL labor force.
Be sure to get the best fantasy football products anywhere here at the National Football Post. Follow me on Twitter: adbrandt.
