This feels like a mockery draft
THE WORST YEAR of professional football in any of our lifetimes is almost upon us. If the court decisions don't go the right way, and maybe even if they do, an entire NFL offseason will be in jeopardy. That has never happened before.
/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-pmn.s3.amazonaws.com/public/F4WTDHSC4NG4FDLV2OJNXFP6BE.jpg)
THE WORST YEAR of professional football in any of our lifetimes is almost upon us. If the court decisions don't go the right way, and maybe even if they do, an entire NFL offseason will be in jeopardy. That has never happened before.
Yes, there have been major work stoppages in the history of the league. The players went on strike in 1982 and 1987, but each time the players went to training camp and collected two regular-season paychecks before walking out. The 1982 strike eventually truncated the season to nine games. The 1987 strike left us with 15 games, three of which were played by scabs and regular players who crossed the picket lines. And, come to think of it, scab football was probably the worst thing the NFL has ever done.
But 2011 has a chance to be horrible in its own special way, even if the entire schedule ends up being played, starting with the players whom the Eagles and the rest of the teams will go about the business of drafting, beginning tonight.
Without an offseason, what exactly will these draft choices be worth?
Quick answer: They won't be worth much.
Unless they have been lying to us for the last 50 years, a drafted player who misses minicamps and training camp, and who doesn't even have access to a playbook, has a chance to be useless. They will barely be able to put them on the field - especially the offensive players.
We have all heard a quarterback go through the arcane chain of terminology that is required to call a play in an NFL offense. It is not something that any of them picks up overnight. Protections are a complex dance for the offensive linemen. Pass routes and running holes and whatnot are not rocket science, but they aren't necessarily second nature for a kid - especially because every NFL team tweaks the terminology anywhere from a little bit to a bunch.
And these drafted kids will be coming in with nothing. Unless something happens to change things in one of the growing number of courtrooms where the NFL and the former NFLPA are racking up the billable hours, these rookies will be receiving a hearty handshake and maybe a trip to town for a press conference - and that's it.
No playbook.
No laptop loaded with video.
No initial minicamp.
No organized team activities.
No coaching.
No nothing.
Without that foundational work, they will be a mile behind the veteran players - and that's true even if they were to get the thing settled for the opening of training camps in July. If they didn't get it solved until late August or September, most of those drafted players would be close to unusable. And if teams were forced to use them, they would be mistake-prone beyond our normal experience.
If it comes to that, the best teams in 2011 will be the ones that play no kids. In a football season with no offseason, the journeyman nickel back will be king.
The quality of play will be atrocious, especially at the start. To miss a football offseason is not like missing the offseason in any other professional sport. In baseball, the offseason is about getting your work in. In basketball and hockey, the offseason for a kid is about getting used to the speed and the level of competition. In football, it is all of those things - but on them are heaped layer upon layer of mind-numbing, reaction-slowing verbiage and tactics.
They all have physical gifts or they wouldn't have been drafted. Still, the speed and the physicality of the pro game are an enormous step up, and the transformation must be accomplished with a playbook that can feel like an anvil hanging around your neck. We all have heard Eagles coach Andy Reid say a dozen times how the biggest jump a player makes is between his first and second year - because that's when he figures it out. We all know lots of players who take months to acquire a functional understanding of how things work.
And that is in the best of times.
And these are not the best of times.
If I were any less into the draft this season, I would be unconscious. It is impossible to take it seriously when the very fate of the sport has been thrown into the laps of any number of sitting federal judges. But it is even more than that.
If there isn't going to be an offseason for these draft choices, what is the point?
Send email to
or read his blog, The Idle Rich, at
For recent columns go to