Last March, the NFL acknowledged years of pre-free agency tampering by opening for the first time a three-day window allowing teams to negotiate with agents of impending free agents.
Then, just before the window opened, the NFL sent a memo that scared everyone straight.
The rule said this: “Beginning at 12:00 midnight ET on Saturday, March 9 (i.e., after 11:59:59 p.m. ET, on Friday, March 8) and ending at 3:59:59 p.m. ET on Tuesday, March 12, clubs are permitted to contact, and enter into negotiations with, the certified agents of players who will become Unrestricted Free Agents upon the expiration of their 2012 Player Contracts at 4:00 p.m. ET on March 12. However, a contract cannot be executed with a new club until 4:00 p.m. ET on March 12.” (Emphasis added.)
The memo said this: “[P]rior to the beginning of the new League Year it is impermissible for a club to enter into an agreement of any kind, express or implied, oral or written, or promises, undertakings, representations, commitments, inducements, assurances of intent or understandings of any kind concerning the terms or conditions of employment offered to, or to be offered to, any prospective Unrestricted Free Agent for inclusion in a Player Contract after the start of the new League Year.” (Emphasis added.)
The two messages were inconsistent. The rule said negotiations may happen but that a contract “cannot be executed” before the official start of free agency. But the memo severely limited the negotiations that may occur. It was impossible to negotiate anything if the possibility of actually negotiating to a consensus was prohibited.
This year, the rule is the same, with a 12-hour delay in the launch of the tampering window: “Beginning at 12:00 noon ET on Saturday, March 8 and ending at 3:59:59 p.m. ET on Tuesday, March 11, clubs are permitted to contact, and enter into negotiations with, the certified agents of players who will become Unrestricted Free Agents upon the expiration of their 2013 player contracts at 4:00 p.m. ET on March 11. However, a contract cannot be executed with a new club until 4:00 p.m. ET on March 11.” (Emphasis added.)
This year, we’ve yet to determine whether the NFL supplemented the rules, published to the media on Thursday, with a memo scaring the teams away from negotiating at all for fear of inadvertently “enter[ing] into an agreement of any kind, express or implied, oral or written, or promises, undertakings, representations, commitments, inducements, assurances of intent or understandings of any kind concerning the terms or conditions of employment offered to, or to be offered to, any prospective Unrestricted Free Agent.”
Presumably, the NFL was hoping to avoid a flurry of reports from the three-day tampering period that a given player had agreed to terms with a given team, like the flurry of reports that arose when the NFL utilized a brief negotiating period after the end of the lockout in 2011. Some think the league hopes to eventually craft -- and market -- a “signing day” for the NFL, where players announce one after another their decisions regarding their next NFL contract, like high-school players picking a college. Possibly by picking up the putting on their heads the latest offerings of the league’s official cap provider.
Regardless of whether this year’s legal tampering window leads to real negotiations resulting in actual agreements that will become binding contracts on Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. ET, the reality is that the negotiations have been occurring for weeks. Opening a three-day window for permissible (yet meaningless) tampering didn’t stop the more meaningful tampering that occurs before the three-day window opens.