Are teams avoiding players who don't "love football"?
Football fans are often surprised to learn that some of their favorite football players don't love the sport as much as they do. They love what football can give them - mainly, the money.
There's nothing wrong with that. Few possess the physical skills to play football at the highest level. Those God-given abilities don't always come with an innate passion for the game.
Whether and to what extent a guy loves football has been a factor in scouting incoming players for years. As noted recently by Jay Glazer, the absence of love for the game has risen to the level of prompting some teams to remove such players from the board.
"For years teams have pulled players off the board for A) injury concerns or B) character concerns," Glazer tweeted on Wednesday. "A third category/reason has been added and most teams I talked to had guys off their board for: 'Doesn't love football.' This was the first year it was so prevalent. I asked around why that is and the thought was because of NIL money, guys have already been paid and some feel they don't need to grind to get paid. So the guys who LOVE FOOTBALL are probably appreciated more."
It's basically the difference between Rocky in Rocky II and Rocky in Rocky III. He went from poor and desperate in II to rich and satisfied in III.
Still, NIL money isn't NFL money. It's definitely not the kind of money that the best guys in the NFL can make. NIL money isn't generational; it's temporary.
While whether or not a guy "loves football" could be a relevant tiebreaker if all other factors are relatively equal, it seems a little extreme to remove a guy from the board for it. Yes, there's always a chance that a guy won't have a natural affinity for the grind. It nevertheless seems foolish to avoid a guy who is sufficiently talented to thrive without embracing working out and studying film and showing up for all voluntary workouts with literal bells on.
It almost seems as if some scouts and coaches resent the fact that players aren't as dependent on pro football as they once were. That they aren't as willing to take whatever shit is directed to them because they have little or no financial security.
It makes sense to embrace players who truly love football to the point that they'd play for free, especially since they might be inclined to demand less money when it's time to negotiate a new deal. It doesn't make sense to pull a guy from the board over it. For a sufficiently talented player, it makes more sense to come up with a way to persuade them to start loving football by understanding what thriving in the NFL can mean for them.
It would be different if guys were coming out of college with $100 million in the bank. Most players aren't going to have enough squirreled away to never have to work. And all of them have limited years to make NFL money.
It seems like an overreaction to shun players who don't ooze love of football. Plenty of people have jobs they don't love. They still do their jobs, and they do them well. Even if they don't roll out of bed every morning with unbridled enthusiasm to go do the thing that pays the bills.