In a recent interview with the Washington Post\u00a0 New York Jets safety Eric Smith voiced his displeasure over the player organized workouts that have been conducted all over the country.\u00a0 Smith offered:<\/p>\n
“I don’t understand why guys are doing this stuff. You’re risking injury. And you got the rookies who aren’t getting paid any money flying in to do these workouts. So they’re putting themselves in a hole before they make any money. Basically, we\u2019re giving the owners all these practices for free. They aren\u2019t spending any money, but their players are still practicing. So they\u2019re making out.\u201d<\/em>“<\/em><\/p>\n This is an interesting take from a player who could be headed to free agency once a new collective bargaining agreement is put into place.\u00a0 On one side you can understand Smith’s reasoning as the risk of injury could jeopardize his next contract, or career for that matter.\u00a0 At the same time most of the workouts were nothing more than doing exercises, light drill work, along with film studies.\u00a0 These are the same types of\u00a0 activities that most players are doing on their own.<\/p>\n In the end it all comes down to money and each player has to do what is in their own best interest.\u00a0 It is one thing to be a team player, it is another to risk your next paycheck.\u00a0 I do not find fault with any player that does not want to risk injury by participating in these workouts.\u00a0 The NFL stands for “Not For Long”, so players must maximize their opportunities to make the most of their careers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a recent interview with the Washington Post\u00a0 New York Jets safety Eric Smith voiced his displeasure over the player organized workouts that have been conducted all over the country.\u00a0 Smith offered: “I don’t understand why guys are doing this stuff. You’re risking injury. And you got the rookies who aren’t getting paid any money […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[213],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-jet-news"},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peLffi-2b3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8373"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8377,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8373\/revisions\/8377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miletestsite.com\/jets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}