The temporary lifting of the lockout in late April served as a stretching of the rubber band, giving teams the ability to talk to players and making it hard, once given the chance to chit-chat, to ever go back. Since then, it has been reported by folks like Mike Freeman of CBSSports.com that lockout-forbidden communications are occurring, and NBC’s Rodney Harrison, who is still plugged in with plenty of players, told PFT Live he knows it’s happening.
The league apparently has opted to look the other way, possibly due to the rampant nature of the violations. Really, would it be fair to chase down one team and then not use those same resources to catch someone else?
As a result, we’ve said that the only teams who’ll get in trouble will be the teams whose coaches or players choose to talk about the fact that they’re talking to each other. And Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Raheem Morris has given the NFL the first piece of potential proof in this regard.
Per JoeBucsFan.com, Morris recently told Steve Duemig of WDAE radio that Morris talks to players like LeGarrette Blount, Sammie Stroughter, and Dez Briscoe “all the time.”
We’ll defer to JoeBucsFan.com’s partial transcript for the context. Though the comment may not be a smoking gun, it could be strong enough to at least prompt the NFL to place a phone call to One Buc Place, at a minimum to let Morris know that if he continues to say things of that nature the league eventually will have to do something about it.