As the NFL draft approaches, you’ll begin to hear that one prospect is a great person on and off the field, and you’ll be hearing that another prospect is sliding down teams’ boards due to off-field issues. Those types of statements raise an important question. How should teams handle prospects’ and players’ off-field issues.
Making sweeping generalized statements is a dangerous business. One school of thought with off-field issues is that those issues reveal what kind of character a person has. This line of reasoning argues that players of good character are more likely to have a good work ethic on the practice field, in team meetings, and on gameday than players of questionable character. While that may be the case in many situations, it’s not accurate in all cases. In a business where rare talent isn’t always combined with rare levels of high character, teams sometimes are forced to choose between good character guys and good players.
In this year’s draft, Janoris Jenkins will be the poster-boy for prospects with questionable character. I’m not making a judgement on his character here for a number of reasons. Most importantly, I don’t know Janoris Jenkins the person, so it’d be unfair of me to make any kind of judgement on whether he is a great person or a terrible person. I’m not in a position to make that call. What I can tell you is that he’s had some off-field issues that resulted in him playing his final year of college football at North Alabama instead of Florida. Those issues included two marijuana arrests, a charge of assault, and a failed drug test. Those factors resulted in Jenkins being dismissed from the Florida football program. Do they mean that he’s a bad person or that he won’t put in effort in preparation and on gameday? No. They just mean that he’s made some poor decisions.
Whether we like it or not, not all the players in the NFL are great role models that are active in their communities across the nation. Many players have off-field issues, and we read about players from the NFL and other major sports leagues being arreted all the time. We don’t live in a perfect utopia where the great players also have great personalities and character. Teams, for the most part, understand that to give the fans what they want, a winning team, they have to sign guys that aren’t necessarily great in the community, and that’s okay. When off-field problems begin to effect the team in a negative way, then it’s time for that team to move on without that player, but a team shouldn’t shy away from a prospect because he’s not overly engaging or because he’s not a great family man. That’s the player’s business, not the team’s, and teams that choose to work with only high character players are creating an unnecessary burden for themselves and the fans they’re trying to keep happy.
