from PFT - this is great to hear IMO: JETS INSIST THEY AREN'T TAMPERING A league source tells us that the New York Jets privately are insisting that they're not engaged in early negotiations with any players who'll become free agents on Friday morning at midnight. If that's true (and we doubt that it is), the Jets would likely be the only team that isn't. As the source described the scene at the Scouting Combine, the tampering was widespread and blatant. Team officials were routinely meeting with agents, and the topics in most cases weren't the agents' clients who play for those teams or the agents' clients who might be drafted. One possibility would be to permit negotiations by coming free agents and prospective suitors to occur from the Super Bowl onward. Since negotiations are occurring anyway on an impermissible basis, the change wouldn't really change the way things are done, and it would correct a situation that is, with all due respect, an embarrassment to the league.
EVERY General Manager in the NFL tampers during the combine, ESPN had an article about it recently. This is a non issue, but at least we are talking with teams. I'd like to see more than talking though. I'd like for them to get a deal done.
Starting from being about $25 million under the cap, does anyone know how much that figure is now that McDropeins, Dyson and Clarke have been let go? How much more would it be if we were to trade Vilma and DRob for picks?
The answer to the tampering thing is to have all contracts expire the day after the Super Bowl. Anybody who was talking to another team's contracted player prior to that date would be clearly tampering and subject to a hefty penalty with no gray areas involved. This month-long window that we have now where nothing is happening in terms of games but all the players are still contracted is the problem. For those who would argue that teams need the month, especially the teams that went to the Super Bowl, to figure out what they are doing I'll just say the deck is stacked pretty heavily against players as it is and pretty heavily against teams that have not made the playoffs in awhile. Giving them a month's lead on free agency is definitely a thing that would aid parity.
