PFT: Big Changes Considered For Nfl Offseason?

[WoodysGirl]

Posted by Aaron Wilson on March 22, 2009, 11:44 a.m.

Due to the economic crisis, the unresolved future of the collective bargaining agreement and other reasons, the NFL could be pondering major changes to its offseason schedule, according to Mike Holbrook of Pro Football Weekly.

Citing “multiple inside sources,” Holbrook writes that league insiders would like to move the NFL draft to late February with the free agent signing period to be held late in March.

“They need to get the draft put ahead of free agency,” a league source said.

Of course, that would accelerate the rest of the scouting process, including the combine and all-star games like the Senior Bowl.

And it would decrease teams’ reliance on big free agency spending in another potential cost-cutting measure for a league that has been cutting jobs and expense.

Such a change would also probably create a lull in the NFL from May to June.

According to a top executive, that’s exactly what NFL employees need.

“Some way, somehow, the NFL needs to find a way to give the league more of a break,” the unnamed executive said. ”It’s like a treadmill that keeps getting faster and faster. They need to have a bigger window between the draft and free agency, regardless of which one comes first.”

 

[Doomsday]

I always thought it made more sense to have the draft before free agency.

 

[CATCH17]

They need to have 7 on 7 tournaments and show them on NFLN.

Who wouldn't watch that?

 

[BigWillie]

They need to have 7 on 7 tournaments and show them on NFLN.

Who wouldn't watch that?

Robert Edwards says, "NO!"

 

[the kid 05]

They need to have 7 on 7 tournaments and show them on NFLN.

Who wouldn't watch that?

me. i dont have nfln

 

[CATCH17]

me. i dont have nfln

Me either but its probably the only network that would air it.

 

[the kid 05]

Me either but its probably the only network that would air it.

unfortunately, i always loved the 7 on 7s competitions we did during high school verse other teams

 

[TheCount]

I always thought it made more sense to have the draft before free agency.

Agreed. The NBA has been doing it that way forever.

 

[big dog cowboy]

“They need to get the draft put ahead of free agency,” a league source said.

Unless I'm missing something, I really don't understand why or what the benefit of that would be.

 

[Beast_from_East]

Thats dumb, free agency needs to be first so you can see what players you can fill holes with.

For example, we lost Canty and replaced him with Igor. We now are not forced to get a starting caliber DE in the draft. Now if the draft is first, do we draft a starting caliber DE or skip it on the hope that we sign Igor???

 

[sonnyboy]

Thats dumb, free agency needs to be first so you can see what players you can fill holes with.

For example, we lost Canty and replaced him with Igor. We now are not forced to get a starting caliber DE in the draft. Now if the draft is first, do we draft a starting caliber DE or skip it on the hope that we sign Igor???

You're missing the point. You have more controll in FA than the draft.

If you hold the draft first teams can work it more from the BPA angle, then in FA they can work more from the angle of filling needs.

Ex: Canty is coming up as a FA. If the draft is first you can see if you can secure a potential replacement without having to reach.
If the BPA whom you drafted is a DE, you can let Canty walk.
If the draft just didn't fall that way for you and you didn't get to address DE til the later rounds, you can now go after resigning Canty as a priority.

 

[Big Country]

You're missing the point. You have more controll in FA than the draft.

If you hold the draft first teams can work it more from the BPA angle, then in FA they can work more from the angle of filling needs.

Ex: Canty is coming up as a FA. If the draft is first you can see if you can secure a potential replacement without having to reach.
If the BPA whom you drafted is a DE, you can let Canty walk.
If the draft just didn't fall that way for you and you didn't get to address DE til the later rounds, you can now go after resigning Canty as a priority.

nicely put sonnyboy...

agree completely, plus it is in a team's best interest financially to boot

 

[jswalker1981]

They need to have 7 on 7 tournaments and show them on NFLN.

Who wouldn't watch that?

Here is a guy's solution for the pro bowl, it is along the same idea you have.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/The-MJD-plan-for-the-Pro-Bowl?urn=nfl,139618

The only thing more boring than the Pro Bowl is talking about how the Pro Bowl is boring. It's like complaining that MTV doesn't play music anymore, or that they don't call traveling in the NBA. Certain things just are the way they are, and if you're still complaining about them, you care more about complaining than you do about traveling or music.

I've got a plan for the Pro Bowl, though. Not necessarily to fix it, but to destroy it, and build something special in its place. You know what I'd do?

I'll tell you what I'd do. Flag. Football. Tournament.

Stick with me here, because I think this could work. To start with, forget about the idea of a traditional football game on Sunday afternoon. That concept is dead. Scratch it.

Each NFL team sends five guys to Hawaii, with maybe one alternate. Everyone would send a quarterback, and then a handful of skill position players. Whether those are wide receivers, running backs, defensive backs, whatever, that's up to the team. They can put together their own flag football squads.

Now, there are certain things we're going to have to sacrifice.

The first thing to go is the fan voting. Sorry. Personally, I wouldn't miss it, because the general public does things like vote Brett Favre into the Pro Bowl, and come on, that's just crazy.

Secondly, my Flag Football Tournament plan sort of leaves offensive and defensive linemen out in the cold. That's just a sacrifice we're going to have to make. We can still have an All-Pro team, or whatever you'd want to call it, and we can reward those guys with trips to Hawaii, or $10,000 bonuses, or whatever. But they're probably not going to play in the game.

And really, would you miss it? A successful Pro Bowl for a lineman is a Pro Bowl where he doesn't get injured. Since there's no blitzing allowed anyway, the lines are pretty much ornamental in a Pro Bowl game. We send them to Hawaii, but we keep them off the field. Sorry, big fellas, but that's the way it goes.

Back to the tournament. We take 32 teams, and seed them 1-32 in order of their regular season finish. Split it into 4 different "regionals," with the Steelers, Cardinals, Giants and Titans as the #1 seeds, and we get a bracket that looks something like this:

And there we go. Everyone plays both ways. It's Tony Romo, Terrell Owens, Jason Witten and Terrence Newman against Jason Campbell, Clinton Portis, Fred Smoot, and Santana Moss. It's Matt Ryan, Michael Turner, Roddy White, and Jerious Norwood against Aaron Rodgers, Donald Driver, Ryan Grant, and Charles Woodson.

The Pro Bowl's all about displaying talent and putting on a show, right? Come on, you wouldn't want to see Steve Smith covering Braylon Edwards and vice versa? Adrian Peterson spinning and juking in the open field, keeping his flags away from defenders? Torry Holt one-on-one against Larry Fitzgerald? Ben Roethlisberger applying the pass rush against Daunte Culpepper?

Being flag football and all, we'd have to sacrifice the hitting that generally comes with football, but that's okay, because we don't see any hitting in the Pro Bowl anyway. In the entire history of the game, we've had, what, exactly one big hit? We're not missing much.

On a big open field, with that kind of talent, we could see some spectacular throws, catches, and runs. Make man coverage mandatory, so no team sits back in a zone and forces the offense to dink and dunk. This is backyard-style. And everybody's mic'd up at all times. I want to hear the trash talk, the jokes, whatever.

We play the first round on Friday, with 16 games running on ESPN and ESPN2, all day long. On Saturday, we play two more rounds, and we narrow the field down to four teams. Sunday on NBC, we play the semifinals and finals back-to-back, with all the eliminated teams in the stands watching, and the winning team splits a million dollars.

That's my plan, and I think it would be fun. Certainly a lot more fun than we have now, which is basically a three-hour light contact drill with men in Hawaiian shirts repeating again and again, "No, we swear, these guys really do care who wins."

 

[johnnyd]

“Some way, somehow, the NFL needs to find a way to give the league more of a break,” the unnamed executive said. ”It’s like a treadmill that keeps getting faster and faster. They need to have a bigger window between the draft and free agency, regardless of which one comes first.”[/QUOTE]


what? a bigger window? it's already torture for the fans to have to wait till late april

 

[Zaxor]

I very much like the idea of putting the draft first

 

[ENGCowboy]

Here is a guy's solution for the pro bowl, it is along the same idea you have.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/The-MJD-plan-for-the-Pro-Bowl?urn=nfl,139618

The only thing more boring than the Pro Bowl is talking about how the Pro Bowl is boring. It's like complaining that MTV doesn't play music anymore, or that they don't call traveling in the NBA. Certain things just are the way they are, and if you're still complaining about them, you care more about complaining than you do about traveling or music.

I've got a plan for the Pro Bowl, though. Not necessarily to fix it, but to destroy it, and build something special in its place. You know what I'd do?

I'll tell you what I'd do. Flag. Football. Tournament.

Stick with me here, because I think this could work. To start with, forget about the idea of a traditional football game on Sunday afternoon. That concept is dead. Scratch it.

Each NFL team sends five guys to Hawaii, with maybe one alternate. Everyone would send a quarterback, and then a handful of skill position players. Whether those are wide receivers, running backs, defensive backs, whatever, that's up to the team. They can put together their own flag football squads.

Now, there are certain things we're going to have to sacrifice.

The first thing to go is the fan voting. Sorry. Personally, I wouldn't miss it, because the general public does things like vote Brett Favre into the Pro Bowl, and come on, that's just crazy.

Secondly, my Flag Football Tournament plan sort of leaves offensive and defensive linemen out in the cold. That's just a sacrifice we're going to have to make. We can still have an All-Pro team, or whatever you'd want to call it, and we can reward those guys with trips to Hawaii, or $10,000 bonuses, or whatever. But they're probably not going to play in the game.

And really, would you miss it? A successful Pro Bowl for a lineman is a Pro Bowl where he doesn't get injured. Since there's no blitzing allowed anyway, the lines are pretty much ornamental in a Pro Bowl game. We send them to Hawaii, but we keep them off the field. Sorry, big fellas, but that's the way it goes.

Back to the tournament. We take 32 teams, and seed them 1-32 in order of their regular season finish. Split it into 4 different "regionals," with the Steelers, Cardinals, Giants and Titans as the #1 seeds, and we get a bracket that looks something like this:

And there we go. Everyone plays both ways. It's Tony Romo, Terrell Owens, Jason Witten and Terrence Newman against Jason Campbell, Clinton Portis, Fred Smoot, and Santana Moss. It's Matt Ryan, Michael Turner, Roddy White, and Jerious Norwood against Aaron Rodgers, Donald Driver, Ryan Grant, and Charles Woodson.

The Pro Bowl's all about displaying talent and putting on a show, right? Come on, you wouldn't want to see Steve Smith covering Braylon Edwards and vice versa? Adrian Peterson spinning and juking in the open field, keeping his flags away from defenders? Torry Holt one-on-one against Larry Fitzgerald? Ben Roethlisberger applying the pass rush against Daunte Culpepper?

Being flag football and all, we'd have to sacrifice the hitting that generally comes with football, but that's okay, because we don't see any hitting in the Pro Bowl anyway. In the entire history of the game, we've had, what, exactly one big hit? We're not missing much.

On a big open field, with that kind of talent, we could see some spectacular throws, catches, and runs. Make man coverage mandatory, so no team sits back in a zone and forces the offense to dink and dunk. This is backyard-style. And everybody's mic'd up at all times. I want to hear the trash talk, the jokes, whatever.

We play the first round on Friday, with 16 games running on ESPN and ESPN2, all day long. On Saturday, we play two more rounds, and we narrow the field down to four teams. Sunday on NBC, we play the semifinals and finals back-to-back, with all the eliminated teams in the stands watching, and the winning team splits a million dollars.

That's my plan, and I think it would be fun. Certainly a lot more fun than we have now, which is basically a three-hour light contact drill with men in Hawaiian shirts repeating again and again, "No, we swear, these guys really do care who wins."

Isn't this called NFL Street?

LOVE this idea

Never guna happen but absolutely love this idea.

 

[LatinMind]

Unless I'm missing something, I really don't understand why or what the benefit of that would be.

because teams will be filling needs in the draft ahead of the Fa season. and the NFL believes it could cut down on teams bidding wars for players. sure the superstars will still be getting their money. but the derrick dockerys? come on now.

 

[ZeroClub]

If the draft came earlier, there would be less time for the college player to prepare for the various combine drills.

That'd make the combine more interesting, I think.

... would it impact the Senior Bowl game(s)?

 

[Sarge]

If the draft came earlier, there would be less time for the college player to prepare for the various combine drills.

That'd make the combine more interesting, I think.

... would it impact the Senior Bowl game(s)?

They could hold the combine at midnite in the middle of December and it would still be overrated IMO/FWIW.