Tag: Tampering Period

1 pending free agent from each AFC team the Chargers could target

Highlighting one pending free agent from each AFC team that could be on the Chargers’ radar.

The free agency frenzy is set to begin on Monday, as it marks the legal tampering period where teams are allowed to start contacting and entering into contract negotiations with, the certified agents of players who will become unrestricted free agents.

The Chargers have already been active, re-signing wide receiver Mike Williams and agreeing with the Bears to trade for edge defender Khalil Mack. But with $21 million in available salary-cap space and needs at various positions, look for them to be active in free agency.

Without further ado, here is a pending free agent from each team in the AFC that the Bolts could have their eyes on.

4 pending free agents the Chargers should tamper with

Chargers Wire’s Gavino Borquez lists four pending free agents that Los Angeles should start negotiating with next week.

The NFL’s tampering period begins next week, allowing the Chargers and the rest of the league to start negotiating with free agents. While these negotiations can take place, teams can’t officially sign a player until March 17.

Los Angeles has quite a few needs to address this offseason. With that being said, here are four key free agents that the Bolts should be tampering with when the period opens up.

Tight end Luke Willson tweets he’s contacted by Seahawks to return

Seattle Seahawks tight end Luke Willson tweeted Monday night he’d been contacted by the teams and will remain in the Emerald City for now.

Seattle Seahawks’ tight end Luke Willson will be staying in the Emerald City for now. Wilson tweeted he’d been contacted by the team Monday evening, but no further details were made available.

With the legal tampering period ahead of free agency kicking off on Monday, the news has been coming out fast and furiously.

Willson didn’t include the details of his new contract, however, it’s clear the Seahawks are intent on shoring up the tight end position. Seattle lost a number of players last season, most notably, Will Dissly, who suffered his second season-ending injury last season.

This story is continuing to develop and the details of Willson’s new contract should be made available on Tuesday.

If you are interested in keeping up with the latest in all the Seahawks’ transactions in the first few days of free agency, feel free to track all the latest in the developments via our live tracker here.

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Free agency starts early (again)

If you were to look at the NFL calendar – which is now constantly changing due to the novel coronavirus situation in the country – it says that free agency doesn’t actually start until March 18. Yet, today, which is March 16, we were bombarded with …

If you were to look at the NFL calendar — which is now constantly changing due to the novel coronavirus situation in the country — it says that free agency doesn’t actually start until March 18. Yet, today, which is March 16, we were bombarded with news about free agents signing new deals — and check out the grades here. It is very obvious that March 16 is not March 18, so what gives?

See, there’s this thing called the legal tampering period. It runs from March 16 to March 18 and it is designed for free agents to start speaking to potential suitors. Those two days are intended to be a time for players to take visits, agents to hammer out deal, and then on March 18 free agency starts. That’s not how it works.

Tampering doesn’t start on March 16 because if it did, there would be no way to announce complex deals. No, tampering starts almost immediately after the Super Bowl is over, hits a peak at the NFL Draft Combine, and is really done by March 16 because deals are announced on March 16. Obviously, all the tampering is happening outside of the legal tampering period. This doesn’t even count tampering through the media when teams or agents give

The thing is teams don’t care. The Patriots essentially let tampering go on the entire time the Tom Brady rumor mill has been churning — and it’s been happening since the week after Super Bowl. Everyone is doing it, so no one wants tampering to be regulated. If everyone is breaking the rules then no one is breaking the rules. Tampering happening during the season is slightly more frowned upon, but tampering rules, in general, aren’t a huge focus of the league.

So in reality, free agency starts almost immediately after the season ends. The only reason to keep a tampering period is for current teams to get the first crack at the player who may leave. The thing is, those teams had the option to extend that player the season before. They have a whole year to negotiate with their agent. There’s a huge need to give current teams the first crack at it because they’ve had that option for a long time.

Let’s say we still keep a moratorium. Players can only come to deals with their teams up until the combine. That makes sense because after the combine all bets are off, so there’s no reason to have an official tampering period listed as an event.

Call it what it is. The NFL starts free agency three — or however many days it wants before the official start of the season — and then players officially agree to a deal that they are bound to which goes into cap-math effect on the start of the new season. The other option is to just start the new year at the same time as what is now called the free agency tampering period. It’s a way to make sure players can’t back out of deals — even if that is rare. Hey, it could even help spread out some of the paperwork. Imagine getting all these contracts and filing them with the league on March 18 because we know those deals are coming March 16.