I’m not a football fanatic, so please explain the following: Why do I hear NFL teams complain about how injuries have hurt a team’s performance? For goodness sake, this is football not ballet! Injuries are par for the course. Don’t they have a second string or something? And, don’t they work that second string in practices, too? …Maybe I oversimplify the problem?
I think in many cases there is a dramatic difference in ability between first and second (and third) best player at a given position.
The second string gets significantly less practice. And usually they are only practicing with other second strings, not the rest of team.
Best way to think about it, if you work your way to being the best backup QB in the league, that means you are not as good as the worst starting QB in the league. (barring some exceptions)
In addition, reserves are often charged with spending their practices acting as the “scout team”: they act as stand-ins for the upcoming opponent, running simulations of that team’s offense and defense, against which the starters then practice that week’s game plan.
Quarterback is a particular problem in this regard: NFL offenses are extremely complex, and the NFL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA, or “contract”) with the player’s union strictly limits the amount of time that can be spent on practice. Fundamentally, the starting quarterback receives the vast majority (if not all) of the practice “snaps” with the starting offense, and the backups receive very few. This isn’t optimal, from the standpoint of having a backup ready to go in case of emergency, but NFL coaches have largely been forced to do it this way, to maximize the time their starter has to prepare and practice.
When a backup QB is forced into the game, while he’s spent many hours studying the offense and preparing, he simply hasn’t had the practice time with the offense.
And, as others have noted: the backups are nearly always not as skilled / talented as the starters. Generally: if they were as talented, they wouldn’t be backups, after all.
A further complication: if a team suffers multiple injuries at a position. If your starter goes down, you have to elevate his backup (but at least his backup has likely been with the team since the off-season, and went through training camp with the team). But, if the backup then becomes injured, a team may be forced to start either a player who’s been on their practice squad (who’s likely even less talented and experienced, as well as not having gotten as much practice time), or a player who they signed off the street when the starter originally went down.
Because injuries hurt a team’s performance.
As in any sport, you pay good money for the best of the best. Many of the players are singular talents that don’t have replacements that can do the same job. If you lose Odell Beckham and replace him with the guy who is #3 on the depth chart then you’re not going to be the same team.
The NFL roster is 53 players, plus up to 10 players on the practice squad. If a player isn’t among those 63 then a team has no control over a player and they are free to sign with any team. You only carry a few players in each of the many positions on an NFL team. Losing a few key players to injury will leave you with very low quality players on the field. And as mentioned, they don’t get many reps with the 1st team in practice so they are not up to speed for gameday.
Practice squad players are technically still free agents; with just one exception they can sign with or be signed by any team at any time (the exception being: a player cannot be signed by or sign with his current teams’ next opponent within 6 days before the game or 10 days if it’s a bye week, so teams cannot go around signing practice squad players each week just to get their opponents’ game plan).
You know, I did not know that. How often does that happen? I usually see various tweets about someone being signed off their own practice squad, not someone else’s. I can’t imagine it being too common since you wouldn’t know too much about the player.
The second string is second because they aren’t as good as the first. It’s not like there are just 11 players on offensive and defensive, the first string is bigger than that because many players would get worn out playing every play. When first string players are injured the second string players are rotated in and they just aren’t as good. Not all of the time, occasionally a second string player takes the opportunity to show that they can standout, but more often than not they’d be on the first string to start with if they were that good.
Injuries are common so there are always roster spots to be filled any given week, so it occurs quite frequently. Obviously, a team is going to be most familiar with the players on their own practice squad so of course the tendency is to fill roster vacancies with your own practice squad players, but every scout and GM in the NFL has a book of every practice squad player and undrafted free agent in the league so they are not totally unfamiliar with the players on other teams’ practice squads. Danny Amendola, for example, was signed to the Rams off the Eagles’ practice squad.
Other big-name players who started their careers on the practice squad are: James Harrison, Jason Peters, Danny Woodhead, and Arian Foster.
I believe they are not considered unrestricted free agents. The team they are on the practice squad for has the opportunity to match the money offered and put them on their roster. Also another team can not sign a player from one team’s practice squad to be on their practice squad. They can only pick them up if they put them on the active roster.
To address the bigger question the OP asked: Yes, every NFL team has to deal with injuries, and they expect to. I would hope that most teams don’t spend much time complaining that a couple notable players get hurt.
Some grousing is justified when you get a bad string of luck, though. Like Cleveland starting 6 different QBs due to injury over 8 games. Or Baltimore last year who had something like 12 different starting cornerbacks get injured. Tampa Bay has been through a bunch of starting running backs going on IR. Circumstances like that are way beyond the norm, and it’s understandable to get frustrated with it. You can’t expect to have 12 worthwhile cornerbacks available to you.
Another example: Green Bay was carrying only two running backs on their active roster at the beginning of the season (Eddie Lacy and James Starks), plus another (Don Jackson) on their practice squad. Lacy and Starks both became injured and unavailable in rapid succession (Lacy ending up on injured reserve with an ankle injury). In the past month, they’ve had to:
- Activate Jackson from the practice squad (and he, too, then got hurt).
- Trade for Knile Davis (who was ineffective, and was cut).
- Play two wide receivers (Ty Montgomery and Randall Cobb) as running backs. They had only practiced a few running plays (out of the shotgun formation), and though they’ve been fairly effective (particularly Montgomery), both of them, too, have also been dealing with injuries.
- This week, they signed Christine Michael, who’d just been cut by the Seahawks.
Starks returned to play last week, but the Packers’ running game has been a mess for weeks.
Thanks for the insight.