By Peter King, MMQB
Sports Illustrated.com
March 5, 2013
We interrupt the never-ending hype for NFL free agency (when, by the way, is the last time a great free agent class led a team deep into that season's playoffs?) to talk about 15 weeks that no one ever talks about. But people should.
Fifteen weeks. That's the time between the end of the 2012 regular season and the beginning of the offseason program for most of the NFL's 32 teams. It's an underrated part of the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement, but a valuable one we don't hear enough about, because it allows players to do what teams are constantly harping on them to do: think about life after football. For years, coaches took more of players' off seasons away to start training and classroom programs early. By 2010, players were expected to be at their facilities by early March to begin the process of working out and learning new stuff for the next season. Wisely, the NFL Players Association drew a line in the sand about the offseason programs, and won five additional weeks off and fewer mandatory offseason training activities. (During negotiations, NFLPA officials even referred to the extra time they were fighting for as the "spring semester.") The result: Players on non-playoff teams now have January, February, March and the first half of April free from any football activities other than ones they choose away from team facilities. Playoff teams are off until mid-April too, as soon as their season is finished.
Last year, I remember Cleveland linebacker D'Qwell Jackson telling me the 15-week gap between the end of one season and beginning of the next helped him return for progress on his degree at the University of Maryland. Cincinnati defensive end Michael Johnson is back at Georgia Tech, working toward his degree this term. And the NFL's reigning defensive rookie of the year, Luke Kuechly, spoke to me from the campus of Boston College, where he's taking five of the eight classes he has left to get his bachelor's degree in marketing.
"I probably wouldn't have been able to come back to school for this semester under the old schedule,'' Kuechly said. "I definitely think the change helps players go back to school by giving them the extra month or so to fit a semester of work in. It's really good for players."
For Kuechly, he'll return to Charlotte for the April 15 opening of the offseason program. He's arranging with his professors to do the last two weeks of work for his classes, plus finals, either before he leaves campus or after he leaves for North Carolina.
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