What about Free Agency?

[Deberg_1990]

Admittedly, i havent been following the NFL lockout coverage much. How does the NFL intend to handle the free agency period once the lockout ends? Arnt they almost certain to miss some preseason games this late in the proceedings? Wouldnt you need at least 3 or 4 weeks of Free agency before games are played?

[ChiefGator]

Admittedly, i havent been following the NFL lockout coverage much. How does the NFL intend to handle the free agency period once the lockout ends? Arnt they almost certain to miss some preseason games this late in the proceedings? Wouldnt you need at least 3 or 4 weeks of Free agency before games are played?

I think I am supposed to either give you a "let me google that for you" link, or say REPOST.

Seriously... noone knows though.

[Titty Meat]

Nope free agency will go into training camp. Teams will get 2-3 days to figure out who of their own they want to try and sign then free agency most likely would begin. There would be some sort of OTA and then a training camp.

[Chief Roundup]

Right now this is what they are saying will be the guideline and the dates will be moved back according to when the CBA is signed.

• July 1 (July 21) -- Educate the clubs on the new league rules and allow voluntary training for teams and agents.

• July 5 (July 25) -- Sign undrafted rookies, as well as give free agents a chance to re-sign with their teams.

• July 8 (July 28) -- League year starts and free agency begins.

• July 13 (Aug. 2) -- Rosters must be set at 90 players.

• July 14 (Aug. 3) -- Deadline for restricted free agents to sign offer sheets.

• July 18 (Aug. 7 ) -- A four-day match period for teams to match restricted free-agent offer sheets.

• July 23 (Aug 12) -- Deadline for rookies to sign contracts (not yet agreed upon).

• July 27 (Aug. 16) -- Signing period for restricted free agents ends, as does the signing period for franchise and transition tenders.

• Aug. 9 (Aug. 29) -- Deadline for players to report to earned credit for an accrued season toward free agency.

[chiefqueen]

Admittedly, i havent been following the NFL lockout coverage much. How does the NFL intend to handle the free agency period once the lockout ends? Arnt they almost certain to miss some preseason games this late in the proceedings? Wouldnt you need at least 3 or 4 minutes of Free agency before games are played?

They are building that into the schedule.

NOTE FOR THE SKIMMERS: You may want to read the quote closely I may have FYP.

[MahiMike]

The owners will be shopping at Walmart this year for their FA's.

[Pasta Little Brioni]

The owners will be shopping at Walmart this year for their FA's.

:hmmm: I heard Favre got a job there as a people greeter to get a discount on Wrangler jeans.

[Okie_Apparition]

How in the hell do you sign the drafted, undrafted, court FAs, propose trades, listen to trade offers & attend TC at practically the same time? Hire people from a GM temp service?

[Okie_Apparition]

& I am a little concerned the mosquitoes in St Joe will be big enough to pack Dex off

[bevischief]

How in the hell do you sign the drafted, undrafted, court FAs, propose trades, listen to trade offers & attend TC at practically the same time? Hire people from a GM temp service?

The good teams will have already have plans in place, they have had nothing else too do this year so far. The only thing to figure out is the final details of price per what stage the player is at in his career.

[Wilson8]

From http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/category/rumor-mill/page/2/

4 days after the ratification: Teams will be able to sign undrafted players. On the same day, teams will get a three-day window to re-sign their own players. It’s safe to say tampering will go nuts in this period as agents shop deals around.

7 days after ratification: Free agency starts. So does the league year. A lot of huge deals figure to be signed within hours. Magic.

12 days after ratification: Rosters will be set at 90 players. That’s a lot of signing in a very short amount of time.

13 days after ratification: Deadline for restricted free agents to sign offer sheets. (We’re assuming RFAs will only be third year players at this point, but that isn’t confirmed.)

17 days after ratification: A four-day period for teams to match restricted free-agent offer sheets ends.

22 days after ratification: This one isn’t agreed upon, but it could be a deadline for rookies to sign. Um, wow. This unprecedented idea is something we’ll delve into later.

26 days after ratification: The signing period for RFAs, franchise players, and transition tag players ends.

[Wilson8]

Whenever NFL free agency begins, spending will come fast and furious

When a new CBA is at last forged and the focus returns to football, what promises to be as unique a free agency period as any in NFL history will undoubtedly take center stage.


With the league's labor negotiations fluid -- see the possible impact of the 8th Circuit Court ruling in favor of the owners -- we don't know how quickly free agency will begin, how long it will last or the rules it will be executed by. And throughout the NFL, everybody's flying blind in that regard.


"If anybody tells you they know the way free agency will unfold, what it will be like, they're just guessing, because no one's been in this situation before,'' one veteran NFL club executive told me this week. "We're all waiting to find out.''


The anticipation, of course, is that a spasm of free-agent spending will commence at the stroke of 12:01 a.m. on whatever day the NFL's annual meat market is scheduled to open. After all, there has been speculation that the 2011 salary cap could wind up north of $140 million, and if new rules are implemented in the labor deal mandating teams spend at least 90 percent of the cap allowance, there figures to be plenty of teams willing to throw a lot of cash around very quickly at a laundry list of available talent.


One longtime NFL general manager I talked to this week foresees a scenario in which the new general manager and/or coaching regimes around the league are going to be particularly tempted to whip out the check book and start writing fat ones. His reasoning? After taking over in January, all they've done is work the draft and sit on their hands for the past six months, and they're itching to start the major roster renovation that almost every new administration undertakes. And that could make for multiple examples of the kind of signing frenzy the Washington Redskins used to annually execute en route to defending their Offseason of the Year title.


"What's going to happen is you're going to have some inexperienced GMs and owners go crazy early on,'' the longtime general manager said. "They're going to think, 'I've got to go out and do something crazy. This is my window of opportunity.' But I think that's absolutely the wrong move. There are so many free agents and so many guys out there that if you're just patient, you can wind up with some good players at really good value and not put yourself out there [at risk] with a couple mega-deals.


"That's going to happen, I promise you. A couple of these guys are going to say, 'Hey, we're going to be aggressive. We've got a fat wallet and we're raring to go.' I just hope those teams are in our division. Because when you go back over the history of free agency, it rarely works out with the big-money guys. Just look at the last five years or so, with Albert Haynesworth, Joey Porter or Terrell Owens.''


If you had to draw up a list of potential big spenders in free agency, based on the inexperience factor as it relates to new or relatively inexperienced front office/coaching/ownership regimes, I suppose you'd be looking in the direction of Tennessee, Seattle, San Francisco, Kansas City, Denver, Carolina and Cleveland. Not that all of those clubs traditionally go the overspending route. You could make a case that clubs like Atlanta, Tampa Bay and St. Louis have obvious needs and the money to burn to meet them, or that the Jets could once again steal the majority of the headlines just by re-signing their own big-name free agents, Santonio Holmes, Braylon Edwards and Antonio Cromartie.


But it'll be intriguing to see which teams jump into the free-agent pool head first, and which teams wait for the many relative bargains that are likely to surface after the initial feeding frenzy abates. Even with the increased dollars available, the smartest teams still will likely shop selectively in free agency and use the new funds for locking up their own free agents or potential free agents in long-term deals. Peyton Manning, Michael Vick, Chris Johnson, DeSean Jackson, Sidney Rice and Robert Mathis are players who come quickly to mind in that category.


"The advantage is not going to lie with the teams that have fewer or more free agents,'' the longtime GM said. "I think the advantage is going to lie with the teams that have experienced people running things. People who understand that if you give out a couple mega-deals, and a guy gets hurt or doesn't play to your level of expectation, you've screwed your team for four or five years. Those players, there are expectations they can't meet. They can't play at the same level they've been playing at. They've got to play at a higher level now. And not many of them do.''


In talking to several general managers or club executives this week, I didn't get the sense any of them were sweating the details of how free agency and the condensed player acquisition period will unfold once the lockout ends. They've all done their homework and seem poised to jump into the thick of things as soon as they get the go-ahead from the league. And to a man, they say they've received next to no guidance from the league on how free agency will operate, given that it's still a topic being negotiated in the labor talks.

"Let me know when it's done, and what the rules are, and we'll react,'' the longtime GM said. "It's not rocket science. The last thing I want is to have to prepare six different scenarios, knowing that five of them were a waste of my time. I don't need any guidance. What are they going to tell me? It's either you've got two weeks to sign your free agents and rookies, or you have a week, or you have three days. It doesn't make any difference to me. Eventually they're going to tell us how many days we've got, and then we'll go to work.''


Some club executives said they were expecting very short windows of time between the end of the lockout and the start of free agency, but another told me he'd be surprised if the NFL threw open the personnel shopping season just two or three days after an agreement is ratified.


"It's got to be longer than that,'' said the veteran club executive. "But everything about free agency will be predicated off the goal of getting to training camp on time. It'll be kind of like studying for finals in college. To get ready, you might have to read 10 pages a night. If you don't do it, you wind up having to read 20 pages a night. And if you get to the night before [the final], you might have to read 500 pages. Right now we can probably still read 20 pages a night and be ready, but if this thing doesn't get settled soon, we might get to a point where we have just three or four days to deal with everything.''


Whatever form free agency takes, it figures to go fast and furious at the start -- as it does to some degree every year -- and provide NFL fans with something of their first true football fix in months. But little about this offseason of labor limbo has been predictable, and not everyone will like the shortened free agency period or consider the process equitable to all 32 teams. That's a given.


"Will it be fair? I don't know if it can be fair or not because we all have different circumstances to deal with,'' the longtime GM said. "Some of us have a lot of our own players who are free agents. Some teams have rookies at the top of the draft that are always tougher to sign than those in the middle or the end. Some teams have a lot of guys under contract, and some teams have a lot of restricted guys.


"We're all on a level playing field not knowing yet what the rules will be. But beyond that, we're not. And all 32 teams are never on a completely level playing field. We always have different circumstances to deal with. That's reality. We're prepared to get back to work whenever we're told to get back to work. We're just waiting for that call.''


http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/don_banks/07/08/nfl-free-agency/index.html

[Okie_Apparition]

FAs won't have time to visit 2-3 days with several teams. It will be, sign for the mega bucks. Sign with someone you know or if you're older & desperate for that ring. You sign with last years top 4-5 teams.

Cards, Browns or Pats FAs for KC