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If you want to know how much havoc — and potentially how much damage — the NFL’s labor battle is inflicting on its on-field product, look no further than this week’s draft.
Something as simple (but still crucial) as the team playbook has become a hostage to the ongoing legal fight between the owners and their locked-out players.
The league is so eager to trump the players and their decertified union that it isn’t even letting most rookies drafted this week get copies of those playbooks or talk strategy their new coaches while the lockout is in effect.
And lest you think it’s no big deal and the coaches and newcomers can do it all on the sly, the NFL is vowing draconian punishment — fines, suspensions and team penalties — for any league personnel caught violating the ban. “It’s a pain, but [the league is] obviously serious about this,” an AFC general manager told The Post this week. “Except for those 36 hours or so [late this week when the lockout was lifted], we can’t talk to our guys at all. Zip. Period.”
The Panthers managed to slip a playbook to No. 1 overall pick Cam Newton, but fellow first-round quarterback Christian Ponder told reporters yesterday the Vikings couldn’t do the same before an appeals court announced late Friday the lockout was at least temporarily back on.
Ponder was far from the only one, because the reinstatement of the lockout came early in the second round Friday night and the league announced the reinstatement of its zero-tolerance bans on contact shortly after.
Not only that, but prospects who didn’t get drafted this week could find themselves in extended limbo if the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals early next week allows the lockout to continue uninterrupted.
That’s because all player moves are being frozen by the league during the lockout, including the mass signings of undrafted free agents that immediately follow every draft.
“Right now there is nothing that you can do with those guys,” Giants general manager Jerry Reese said of the undrafted players. “We can’t even call them [during the seventh round] to start recruiting them like we normally would.”
The teams and players who seemingly have the most to lose should the lockout be allowed to drag on are the three clubs with first-year head coaches and rookie quarterbacks– the Panthers, Titans and 49ers.
Imagine being Ron Rivera, Mike Munchak or Jim Harbaugh and possibly having as little as a couple of weeks in September or October to install entirely new offensive and defensive schemes with a rookie under center.
“You would really have to feel for guys like that if [the lockout continues],” Jets coach Rex Ryan told The Post last month, referring to new coaches with new quarterbacks. “I know I wouldn’t want to have to do it.”