NFL free agency legal tampering starts on Monday unless it doesn’t
By Brian Miller
The NFL is ready to get their 2020 new year ready to roll and on Monday, the legal tampering period opens ahead of free agency. Or maybe it won’t.
In a perfectly normal world, NFL fans would be counting down the hours to the start of the legal tampering period ahead of free agency but unfortunately, the start of this process may get delayed as the world’s current health crisis hangs in limbo.
I really don’t want to make this about the “virus” but it seems to be the dominant headline on every channel. No NBA, NHL, NCAA, March Madness, Masters, Nascar, Formula One, and for that matter most high-school sports as well. Yet, the NFL still remains.
The reason we don’t know what tomorrow will bring is that today is the closing date for CBA voting by the NFL players. If the league is going to put a hold on the start of free agency or pre-draft visits, they are not going to do so until after the CBA vote is taken. The reason is simple if the NFL shutters it’s operations for any period of time, they also delay the voting process as well. They don’t want that.
So tomorrow becomes the key date for the league for several reasons, one, the CBA will have been voted on and the legal tampering session will begin…unless the NFL closes its doors until the virus subsides.
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There are plenty of people out there who believe that this should have already been done and I’m not going to weigh in with my thoughts on the subject but what we do know is that at this time of year, free agency consists of phone calls with agents and teams are not allowed to meet with impending free agents until March 18th at the earliest. So while the league may still be open for business, most of that business is being conducted by phone calls at this point
Regardless, Sunday will be a big day for the NFL and we should know what direction the league is going to go in once the voting closes tonight at midnight.
As for the Miami Dolphins and other NFL teams, if all goes as planned, we should start getting an idea of who the Dolphins may be looking for on the market. We may get a better idea of what direction the team is looking to take.
The Dolphins are expected to be prudent with their league-leading cap space and this should become a year to year norm as long as Chris Grier and Brian Flores are running the franchise.