NFL Off-season schedule

February 21-27: NFL Scouting Combine, Indianapolis, Indiana

Team representatives won’t have to worry about CBA wrangling this year, but there will still be a second level of business going on in Indianapolis. Though the New York Giants have recently made news with a series of cuts (LaVar Arrington, etc.), most teams do their necessary salary-cap maneuvering in the days just before free agency, which happens to coincide with the trip to Indy. Releasing players, re-signing players, placing franchise tags…this type of news often hits while the teams are at the combine, or just after their return.

In fact, as for franchise tags, look to…

February 22: Deadline for clubs to designate franchise and transition players

Each team has one franchise-player tag to use on a player who is scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent. If a player is tagged and subsequently signs a multi-year deal without the tag being removed, that tag remains on that player for the length of his contract.

There are two types of franchise tags, exclusive and non-exclusive, but both require the team to extend a very sizeable one-year tender offer (the average of the top five salaries at his position this year for exclusive tags and last year for non-exclusive tags) to the player. This year, an exclusive tag on a quarterback would cost a team more than $12 million, so it’s not an easy decision to make. Even a franchised punter would draw an offer of over $2 million.

Transition players get a tender of the average of the top 10 salaries at their position, while the team gets a right-of-first-refusal on any offer they may get from another team. There are many, many additional details regarding tagging players, which is why most teams employee cap specialists in their personnel departments.

Most of those details are a bit dry. What might be of more interest to the average NFL fan is the speculation that franchise tags could come out in more abundance this year. Why? That inflated salary cap again. The new CBA pushed last year’s salary cap from $94 to $102 million in an instant, and its up to approximately $109 million this year. The Bucs are not the only team with a significant amount of available cap space.

March 1: Deadline for teams to make qualifying offers to restricted and exclusive rights free agents

Free agency is mostly the playground of unrestricted free agents, those fortunate gentlemen who have expired contracts and at least four seasons of free agency credit. However, there will be two other groups of players who become free agents on March 2, and teams can affect the manner in which they do so with the proper qualifying offers.

A player with an expiring contract becomes a restricted free agent if he has three seasons of accrued credit. He can negotiate with other teams but his original team can match any contract offer he receives or decline to match it and receive draft-pick compensation from the other team instead. A player with an expiring contract becomes an exclusive rights free agent if he has less than three seasons of accrued credit. He can only negotiate with his original team.

In each case, those players only fall into those categories if they receive a tender offer from the team by March 1. If they do not receive such an offer, they become unrestricted free agents, able to sign with any team without compensation. It is common for teams to extend the qualifying offers to almost all of their impending restricted and exclusive rights free agents. It is also common for restricted free agents to accept those one-year offers as their contract for that season, putting them in position to become unrestricted free agents the following spring.

March 2: Free agency begins

Also, teams can trade players beginning on this date, though that is far less common. Most player trades that do occur during the offseason happen during or somewhere right around the draft.

March 25-28: NFL Annual Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona

Commonly referred to as the “owners’ meeting,” this annual get-together (last year it was in Orlando) is a breeding ground for news. Last year, the headlines that came out of Orlando included the possibility of a preseason game in China in 2007 (it will happen, in fact, between New England and Seattle on August 9 in Beijing), the plan to broadcast a series of Thursday and Saturday games exclusively on the NFL Network, a new list of touchdown celebration no-nos (no props, no going to the ground, no group efforts) and the assertion that the NFL was still looking closely at getting a team in Los Angeles.

There is a spring meeting in May, too, so not all of the big news happens in March. But there are always one or two hot-button issues that dominate the annual meeting. Last year, of course, the most-discussed topic was the search for a replacement for retiring Commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

April 3:NFL schedules are released.

April 20: Signing period ends for restricted free agents

This deadline always falls about a week before the draft, because of the possibility of draft-pick compensation if a restricted free agent switches teams. It usually passes pretty quietly, however, because by this point most of the restricted free agents have accepted their tender offers. Teams get a week to decide whether or not to match an offer given to their restricted free agents by other teams, and a week after the 20th happens to be one day before the draft.

April 28-29: NFL Draft, New York City

Do the math above and you’ll get the dates for this year’s draft, April 28-29. As always, the first three rounds of the draft will be held on Saturday, from noon to approximately nine or 10 p.m. ET. Rounds 4-7 will be conducted on Sunday, beginning at 11:00 a.m. ET and often finishing around five or six p.m.

June 23: World Bowl XV, Frankfurt, Germany

It’s called NFL Europa now, and it begins right here in Tampa in March.

The NFL’s long-running European venture, which has gained a foothold mostly in Germany, gets ready for its spring season with a joint training camp in the Bay Area. NFL Europa’s season begins overseas on April 14 and culminates in late June in World Bowl XV, its championship game. The Buccaneers have allocated five players to the league this year: WR Jovon Bouknight, G Jonathan Clinkscale, QB Bruce Eugene, CB Carlos Hendricks and WR Kyle Smith.

July 22: Signing period ends at 4:00 PM ET for unrestricted free agents who received June 1 tender

This date usually passes quietly, too, as very few unrestricted free agents are still looking for jobs at this point. Most have either re-upped with the home team or found new addresses well before mid-July. However, for those who got tender offers but didn’t sign before this date, they can now only re-sign with their original team until a date well into the actual season.

August 5: Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, Canton, Ohio

As we mentioned above, this kicks off the actual game action. The matchup: Pittsburgh vs. New Orleans. This game coincides with the induction weekend for the newest Hall of Fame class. Other than the Steelers and Saints and the two teams playing in China, the preseason starts for everyone else on the weekend of August 9-13.

August 28: Roster cutdown to maximum of 75 players

The first of two cuts, this one falls early in the week before the final preseason game. Most teams are in the mid to high-80s on their roster count before this date and thus must cut 10-15 players.

September 1: Roster cutdown to maximum of 53 players

And this is right after the last preseason game. After the roster hopefuls have one more chance to display their skills, teams make the tough decisions to get down to the regular-season limit of 53. Eight-man practice squads usually take place over the next couple days.

September 6-10: Kickoff 2007 Weekend

March 2nd, and April 28th are the two best days to be an NFL fan IMO. I look forward to free agency and the draft more than I look forward to the Super Bowl.

Line Judge wrote:

March 2nd, and April 28th are the two best days to be an NFL fan IMO. I look forward to free agency and the draft more than I look forward to the Super Bowl.

Me 2