Published April 30, 2021 at Defector
On Tuesday, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones called the prospects who opted out of the 2020 college football season due to COVID-19 “compromised.” “I would much rather have seen the reps and the plays that they got,” he said.
On Monday, Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert said that his team prefers to draft players who did not opt out. “As I stated in the summer, if a player chooses to opt out for whatever reason, that’s their decision and we will respect it,” he said. “However, if a player played in 2020 and those players are of equal value, the one that didn’t play and the one that played, we’ll take the one that played because we don’t know what the opt-outs will be like in their first season back in football.”
Neither Dallas or Pittsburgh have ever been known as progressive thought leaders among NFL teams, so those views aren’t particularly surprising. The players who chose not to participate in a college football season that was postponed, stopped, re-started and cut short due to an ongoing and uncertain pandemic, are not the guys you want in the trenches next to you if you’re a Football Man. “It’s an old-school mentality,” as one NFC executive described the disdain for players who chose safety and family over an anomalous mini-season of football.