NFLPA president endorses Leonard Fournette, others skipping bowl games
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Many current college football coaches and former players have weighed in on the sport’s latest hot-button issue of players skipping bowl games because they don’t want to get hurt and affect their NFL careers.
While current NFL players such as Ezekiel Elliott and Jordan Jenkins have voiced their opinions, the perspective of NFL executives has largely been missing from the debate. After all, the players are sitting out hoping to protect their draft status by avoiding chance of injury or aggravating a nagging injury.
Monday Morning Quarterback’s Albert Breer caught up with NFL Players Association president Eric Winston to talk about players skipping bowl games. Winston expressed support for Leonard Fournette and Stanford RB Christian McCaffrey.
“This is really the first professional financial decision they have to make,” Winston told Breer. “It’s whether to risk what they have to play in the bowl game. Take Leonard Fournette, because he’s a consensus Top 5 pick. You can put a value on that. You say, this is what the second pick of the draft is, this is what the seventh pick of the draft is.
“And what is the upside of going and playing in the bowl game? It might be a lot. It might be none. In his case, it’s probably not a lot, if not none, right? So you have to then ask yourself, ‘What does that mean to me?’”
He clarified his stance that he’s not calling for all potential high-draft picks to miss bowl games, but that he applauds Fournette and others for considering their potential professional careers.
“I don’t say, ‘This guy’s right or this guy is wrong,’” Winston said. “I applaud them for standing up and making a decision, just like I applaud the guy from Texas A&M (Myles Garrett), who sounds like he’s gonna be a Top 5 pick and says, ‘Hey, I wanna play.’ There’s no right or wrong answer. I applaud both of them. The ones that I hate to see are guys that say, ‘Oh man, I never really thought of that.’”
For more on why Winston is unhappy with former players criticizing Fournette, and why the issue is personal to him, Breer’s feature can be read here.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
