Are NFL Coaches Communicating With Players?
While the NFL coaching staffs and team officials are prohibited from communicating with players during the lockout, it seems rather improbable to believe that there is no absolutely no contact between the two sides while their negotiators try to work out a new CBA.
You'll recall that Buccaneers coach Raheem Morris let slip that he talks to players "all the time" (to read the partial transcript from that radio interview last month, click this link), and there have been whispers that coordinators and assistants are talking to players under the cover of darkness (not at Woodward and Bernstein levels or anything; just a little more covertly than normal).
So, it's interesting that Len Pasquarelli of CBSSports.com and Sports Xchange reports that an AFC assistant coach told him the idea of mail fraud has been discussed in an attempt to communicate with players.
Writes Pasquarelli: "An AFC assistant told The Sports Xchange this week he was party to a conversation just after the draft in which it was suggested that the team distribute playbooks, but with the postdate on the office mail machine manipulated to reflect a date during which the lockout was lifted for four days in late April, when it was legal, albeit temporarily, to talk to players."
That's … well, that's kind of unbelievable (but props for thinking outside the box). So, did the team actually go through with it?
Said the assistant to Pasquarelli: "I don't know and I don't want to know. But I wasn't born yesterday, either. I know there's some stuff going on around the league, because (coaching) friends tell me about it."
The NFL claims to have investigated a few of the rumors, and the league, not surprisingly, has not found any violators.
But if we want to get really conspiracy-theory crazy, perhaps the NFL doesn't mind that the teams could be surreptitiously breaking league-lockout rules. After all, the NFL doesn't want to end the lockout and then have the players not perform well.
So, maybe if the league looks the other way while the coaching staffs aren't so obviously communicating with players, the play will be a little stronger once practices and games begin. Knowing this, the NFL would rather hide its head in the sand, in the name of quality play, than actually punish teams during the lockout.
That's probably not exactly the case, but what could be more American on July 4 than a nice conspiracy theory?
