Players Communicating with Coaches During Lockout

Check out this excerpt from Mike Freeman at CBS Sports:

***

Over a two-week period, I spoke with a half-dozen players and handful of assistant coaches from both conferences. The picture that emerges is one where coaches and players, despite rules against it, stay in almost weekly contact with one another using a variety of technologies.

While lockout rules are supposed to prevent contact between players and coaches, when it comes to the team workouts, both sides are utilizing Skype, e-mail, text-messaging and good, old-fashioned phone calls to update coaches on the progress of group workouts, what players are doing to stay in shape and even personal issues.

Sometimes, they simply gossip or talk about the lockout. Think of the irony of talking about the lockout when they're not supposed to be talking during the lockout. It's like talking about Fight Club during a fight.

Players privately acknowledge that by engaging with coaches during the lockout they are in a way undermining their own trade association. The players' greatest leverage during the lockout is their particular and unmatched skill set, and if they secretly work with their teams the players are undercutting their own power.

They don't seem to care. What was stated repeatedly in interviews is that whichever team stays the most cohesive during this highly divisive fight with owners will have the biggest advantage once the lockout ends.

"Eventually we'll have football again," one high-profile offensive player said. "All that matters to me is who is ready and who isn't."

Players also say that while they see owners as the enemy, they don't view assistant coaches the same way.

***

The more I hear about the lockout, the less clear the whole mess becomes. It seems like everyone wants football except for the owners and those leading NFLPA at this point.

Author: Mike Freeman

Source: CBS Sports