Will Steelers be disciplined for talking to Lemon

I agree with what you're saying. At the same time, I don't see it as interference. Just draft the guy - whether you can reach him by phone or not. Why do you have to talk to him in the moment to make the pick? What could the player POSSIBLY say at that on-the-clock MOMENT, that would change your mind one way or the other? Even if in that moment, the player says, "I hate Philly", what are you going to do after already trading up?

If they determine that the Steelers did interfere and they get some kind of penalty, then the rule needs to change to NO TALKING WITH ANY PLAYER during the draft, until you're on the clock.

 

I agree with all of this.

And I think it shows that what they did wasn't against the rules.

But as we've said many times here, we don't really know what the rule means. We just have different interpretations...both of which are reasonable IMO, I just think mine makes more sense.

 

I guess your answer is "no"....

 

Talking to anyone in particular

 

The OP

 

Yep.

Seems pretty clear that this was nothing to get worked up over.

 

I had no clue they did this. It is talked about the war rooms a lot, so I can't imagine they didn't know it.
Way to throw away a pick.

I have no idea what they might have been thinking or what was happening at the time.
Maybe it was just a mistake, one that comes with a price.

 

let's have some lemonade.

 

This tracks for the NFL. Vaguely written rules seem to be their specialty.

 

This is pretty old news at this point.

Seems like the leagues agreed that there is nothing wrong with what they did.

The rule explicitly states that you can talk to players when you are not on the clock. But you can't "obstruct".

While "obstruct" was never defined by all the members of the media who got all worked up over this, it's likely about trying up all means of communication. Which is probably something that could have been done in the early 90s, but would be basically impossible to do now.

Seems like we were talking to the player. But not also trying to monopolize lines of communication via his agent (and presumably the agency that the agent is part of).

Instead, when we were talking to the player a trade happened. PHI tried to call the player, but he didn't take the call because he was talking to a NFL team that was about to draft him. PHI then called his agent, who let him know that someone traded up to pick him.

Unless some punishment is very, very late in coming, the league seems to agree that there was no obstruction here. And if this counts as obstruction, then I can't see why they would explicitly say that you can talk to players when you aren't on the clock.

 

My guess is that there is probably very clear language on what "obstruction" means somewhere in the CBA or some other NFL rule book. These rules are written (and then likely poured over and edited) by highly priced lawyers. The words are almost certainly carefully chosen and have specific meanings in the documents they are written in.

But sports "journalists" (and "journalists" in general) are super-lazy and no one who was saying this might be a violation bothered to do any work to figure out what the word means.

 

The Eagles did in-fact get in touch with Lemon prior to the pick.

The idea that they would trade up to draft him without talking to him, but not draft him without talking to him (after trading up to draft him without talking to him) doesn't really make any sense IMO.

The league seems to agree that this was not obstruction (or whatever the wording was). Because if you can't talk to a player before you're not on the clock, then the rule explicitly saying that you can talk to the player before you're on the clock makes no sense.

The media **** storm about this was all about getting clicks from Steelers fans who felt like the team looked stupid on national TV (which they did). They were successful in getting clicks. This was a complete non-issue.

I guarantee that no one who wrote a story or tweet to generate "buzz" about the league potentially penalizing the team will write a tweet or a story about how they were totally wrong and there was no punishment. And likely not even an "investigation" to determine if there should be a punishment.

 

I don't think they'll stop calling guys when they aren't on the clock. It seems to be something that we've consistently done. Which I think suggests we think there's value to doing it. Having it be so public with no punishment (or even any statements from the league about it) seems to make it pretty clear that it's OK to do.

Maybe it's just my read, but I thought implication of your post to be that they were lucky that no disciplinary action was taken. I think it's more that they didn't do anything that warranted disciplinary action. Maybe that's what you meant. If so...sorry for misinterpreting.

Seems to me like they followed the rule as it's written.

I agree that it was embarrassing for them to not be able to select a player they clearly had higher on their board than the guy they took.

But I also think it gave us an interesting glimpse into how they were actually doing something close to BPA because they didn't just blindly pick the next WR. I think they got burned by this when they picked Edmunds. And arguably Bush (at least re: the trade up). I'm personally a fan of that.

As I've said throughout this post (and just a few posts above this one), I think this all could have been put to bed very easily if there were any journalists who did any actual work instead of just regurgitating what their favorite anonymous sources tell them (when they aren't just making **** up and pretending it came from someone "close to the situation" or some other BS weasel words)

 

I really think you're overreacting. It was a simple mistake because the Steelers didn't know there was a trade. So what?

 

I agree that the benefit is small.

The cost is also zero.

Which is why this decision to call or not call players early doesn't make any difference.

 

I don’t remotely look at this whole thing being much of an issue at all

Along the lines of throwing a plastic bottle into the paper recycling bin

That's just me