Andrew Whitworth sees virtual offseasons as future of NFL: ‘I think you’re going to see a transition’
The NFL and NFLPA are still working through a plan for the offseason this year, attempting to find the best possible way to safely allow teams to train and work out together before training camp in July. Typically, organized team activities (OTAs) and minicamp would be taking place this spring, and the plan is still for both to be held.
But as we’ve seen in the last week or so, players on a handful of teams are boycotting the offseason program and opting to train on their own. Andrew Whitworth isn’t surprised by that and while he said he doesn’t yet know if the Rams will take a similar approach, he thinks players prefer to train on their own instead of going to the facility to work out with the team.
“A lot of guys are in their mold of, ‘Hey, I’ve got exactly who I want to train with. I’m training the way I want to train. And I don’t want to break from that to have to go back out to my team and have to train whatever they’re doing because that’s not really on the timeline of what I’m doing. What if it’s a different style of lifting or a different program?’” he said on the LA Football Podcast this week.
Last year was a major change for the NFL, with OTAs and minicamps getting canceled. Players weren’t able to report to the team until training camp in July, which a lot of guys didn’t mind. Whitworth saw his teammates show up in shape and mentally refreshed, which shows that maybe they didn’t need a full spring training program organized by the team.
Whitworth didn’t downplay the difficulty of navigating last season during the pandemic, but he thinks virtual offseasons and limited spring workouts will become the standard at some point soon.
“So I think you’re going to see a transition,” he said. “COVID obviously was serious and an issue and was part of it, but I think it’s also going to be kind of a stopping point where guys are going to say, ‘You know what, I had a tremendous year and I didn’t go to the facility once in the offseason and I didn’t hardly go through camp and I had a great year.’ And I think guys are going to finally say, ‘You know what, I’m just going to do what I do in the offseason and I’ll see you guys come August.’”
Workout bonuses are something that a lot of players have built into their contracts, but Whitworth says teams have tied in those bonuses to attending virtual meetings, which he expects to continue in 2021.
“Instead of working out, you can tie your attendance to logging onto the virtual meeting, so that’s what we’re going to see happen,” he said. “And I think that’s why the union is pushing so hard to make it all virtual all the time. Let that be the new standard for offseason bonuses because the reality is, offseason bonuses were created to hide cap money.”
Whitworth probably won’t play in the NFL much longer, considering he’s 39 years old and has just two years left on his contract, but he thinks a virtual offseason is the best approach for the NFL to take.
“Hopefully the union and the league will find a way to do that because I really think virtual offseasons would be the way to go, even if you shorten it down to where you said, ‘Hey, there’s a two- or three-week window where you can come in with the team and do some OTA practices, but outside of that, it’s really kind of train on your own stuff.’ I think you’re going to see that being more prevalent in the league.”
