The Pittsburgh Steelers submitted a proposal to modernize the “legal tampering” window on the eve of free agency. As it stands, player agents or players representing themselves can converse with teams during a 52-hour period prior to the official start of free agency.
The Steelers want to allow direct contact between players and teams, including those with agents (which is nearly all players). Teams would have permission to conduct a one-hour Zoom meeting with players and arrange for an in-person meeting under the proposal.
With the owners meetings set to take place next week, all of the rule proposals are coming out. Albert Breer went through a list of them recently for Sports Illustrated, gauging the odds of them passing. Below is what he wrote of the Steelers’ plan to modernize legal tampering.
Pittsburgh Steelers’ proposal to allow contact between players and teams during the negotiating period: As it stands, during the 52-hour “legal-tampering” window, only agents can communicate with teams. Pittsburgh’s proposal would allow teams to conduct a zoom with a player for an hour and make travel arrangements after agreeing to terms ahead of the start of the league year. I don’t know what the argument against it would even be. The proposal should be voted through with no objection. I think it passes.
For years, the “legal tampering” window has been treated as a sort of running joke. Pretty much everybody acknowledges that some illegal tampering already takes place, anyway — right, Tom Brady? Teams immediately announce contracts at 4 PM/ET at the start of the new league year, despite ostensibly never speaking to players. The Steelers basically want to legitimize what is already taking place.
So it’s no surprise that Breer and other insiders seem confident that the proposal will pass “with no objection.” It probably doesn’t hurt that Steelers HC Mike Tomlin is on the Competition Committee and is widely respected. But I think all 32 teams would view this as being in their best interests, providing a more navigable runway to the true start of free agency.
Some even argue that it doesn’t go far enough, and perhaps in the future we will see it expand even further. For now, introducing some formal level of contact between player and team is a sensible step in that direction. Teams already work out trades in advance, as the Steelers did with DK Metcalf.
I could see a future in which NFL transactions eventually become a 365-day-a-year occurrence. Teams want as much flexibility as possible, so what’s the point of a trade deadline? Competitive balance and such things tend to fall by the wayside when they get in the way of convenience. That’s why the “legal tampering” window exists in the first place, after all. The Steelers’ proposal is a baby step in this eventual direction.
