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Here’s a odd thought for Steelers fans.
Let’s say the franchise drafts Ben Roethlisberger’s successor at quarterback next year. Then all of Pittsburgh sits down to watch him suit up …
… in his college bowl game.
What?!
Weird, right? But not entirely out of the question.
Given the uncertainty of, well, everything because of the covid-19 pandemic, no one knows what is going to become of the fall football schedule.
For the time being, the NFL is attempting to plow through as unscathed as possible. With or without fans in the seats.
But college football could get put on the shelf for a while. Some conferences may play (like the SEC), while others may not. And there is even talk of moving the sport to a February-May 2021 schedule. If college football doesn’t play in the fall, then the NFL may soak up the open Saturday dates. That could benefit both the league and the networks.
Where that gets tricky is the timing of the NFL draft which normally happens in late April.
Based on that potential scheduling conflict, the NFL would have to make a big choice.
1.) Hold the draft as scheduled, a few weeks before the college football season ends.
Or
2.) Push the draft back. Likely, at least six weeks.
So what would the NFL prefer? Selecting players without a combine, workouts or interviews? Then, they’d send them back to their college teams to fulfill their final games before recalling them for offseason workouts.
That doesn’t sound very appealing at all. The second option, though, is also far from perfect.
If the NCAA completes a 10-12 week season between the start of February and the end of April, plus conference title games, and two weeks for the four-team playoff, that puts the end of the college season into the middle of May.
Now the NFL would have about nine weeks between that point and the start of training camps to get the combine, interviews, workouts, the draft and minicamps squeezed in before training camps start.
Pretty much impossible to do. Or, at least, impossible to do as the league is accustomed.
Essentially, the NFL has to decide where it wants to make sacrifices. Scouting its prospects to their season’s end and avoiding injury as they complete their college football campaigns.
Or more time for practice with — and orientation for — those players once they get selected.
My guess is the teams would probably prefer to yield some of the latter. Especially since working under the confines of a condensed offseason would be fresh in the minds of coaches since they are all enduring that now.
If you are a team such as the Bengals in 2020, though, you are going to fret in either direction. Let’s say such a scenario was in existence this year. Cincinnati could’ve either picked Joe Burrow first overall, sent him back to LSU to play three hard postseason games, then get him back and throw him right into the Bengals system immediately.
Or they could wait to draft him in early June and have about a month to get him NFL ready as a starter.
Your choice.
Keep in mind, that could be the Steelers’ choice next year if Roethlisberger decides his elbow has had enough after 2020 and if the team decides to draft a quarterback to replace him.
Let’s also consider that lots of players who think they are going to be high-round picks—such as Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence— may not play at all under these circumstances. That could make the draft even more of a blind dart-throwing contest than it was this year.
Players continuing to suit up in college after being drafted isn’t unprecedented. It happens in hockey all the time. Baseball sometimes, too. But it’s not as common to see the bulk of those players jump out of their college teams and right onto an NHL or an MLB roster.
Occasionally, like Chris Kreider in 2012 when he went right from Boston College onto the New York Rangers playoff squad. But that’s an exception, rather than the norm.
Football is different, though. In how the game is played. How it’s scouted. And its roster construction.
The bottom line may come down to who does the NFL want to help more? Its scouts and general managers finding the players? Or its coaches molding the players once they get into the system?
Should it come to this, it’d be wiser to push the draft back and let whichever college kids want to play, finish out the year. Then heal up. Get more accurate medical information and continue with the draft as close to normal as possible.
Just on a later page or two on the calendar.
However, the smartest thing to do would be to never speak of college football in April again.
Play the season in the fall. Or don’t play it at all. Anything else is chaos for chaos’ sake.
Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via Twitter. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.
Categories: Sports | Steelers/NFL | Breakfast With Benz
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