There has been a lot of discussion on the board the past couple days questioning how some of these deals are allegedly getting done before the 48-hour legal tampering period begins. The following Sports Illustrated article does an excellent job explaining how teams and agents circumvent the rules:
https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/02/22/free-agent-tampering-period-agents-players-mmqb
Here is a short excerpt from the article:
You’ll hear a lot about free agency and the rules over the next three weeks. There will be breathless speculation over what will go down during the NFL’s so-called “tampering period,” a 48-hour stretch when teams and agents can legally negotiate for the first time. There’ll be clocks counting down to March 14 at 4 p.m.
Just know this: Pretty much all of it is for show. The deals that will be done in 20 days? Those are real. But most of the other stuff you’ll hear between now and then isn’t much above fiction.
Listen to the words of one prominent agent, who’s going back with us through a timeline from a few years back, when a client of his hit the market. At this point, the agent is recounting leaving the combine in Indianapolis, with a week left before the legal tampering period, and how he absolutely knew by then that: A) he had his financial figure, and B) at least two teams would pay it.
“I knew they were all in, like all in, more than before the combine—way more in,” said the agent. “There was still a smattering of others, but I wasn’t feeling overly confident that we were going to have five or 10. All I cared about was, Do I have the number that I predicted? By then, you don’t care who. The week before free agency, it’s more about, ‘Hey, I got my number.’ Everything else is smoke and mirrors.”
The made-for-TV song and dance will have you thinking there’s some furious dash to squeeze everything that goes into franchise-shifting and life-altering decisions for teams and player into those two days. The truth is what the agent here is saying: He knew what he had.