Dawgs By Nature
When a blue-chip high school player is seeking a college to attend and advance his football career at the next level, he goes through all the offers. Then, the athlete makes a decision. If his childhood school did not offer him a scholarship, then he would either become a walk-on and pay his own tuition and housing instead of receiving the free ride, or he would accept a scholarship from another school.
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The bottom line is, the player decides where to go to play. The respective colleges make the ultimate decision to give him a scholarship offer or not, but they don’t decide if the athlete accepts and becomes a roster member.
The player does.
At the professional football level, it is the complete opposite. Individual clubs either select athletes via the draft or sign players who are deemed free agents, which means they are not under contract with any other team or league.
This means that pro football clubs decide who plays for them.
Well, hold on a sec. That’s not exactly the truth. There are two categories of players who ultimately decide which teams to sign with: free agents and undrafted rookie free agents.
Yeah, yeah, they sound the same. Okay, they are the same. Neither category has a valid contract with an actual team. Satisfied? But there are some differences. The “free agent” usually is a veteran player who is waiting for his agent to get a call with an offer from a new club. The “undrafted rookie free agent” is a dude who just completed his college career and wasn’t selected in any round of that year’s draft. So, he has never played pro ball, and like the veterans, is waiting for his agent to get a call with an offer from any team. This is usually done right after the draft has concluded, or within days, as the selection of available players has thinned down.
The Cleveland Browns are a team that is known for signing quite a few rookie undrafted free agents, and quite a few have made the final roster and become valued roster members. This year alone, at safety, it appears that undrafted rookie free agent Ronnie Hickman will start. Look at the linebacker positions, in which this year the Browns will feature three new bodies on the field. One new starter is Mohamoud Diabate, another former undrafted rookie free agent.
On the 2024 roster were 12 players who went undrafted coming out of college.
In Cleveland’s first preseason game against the Carolina Panthers, the game plan was to begin the game with the Browns’ second team offense and defense for the first half, then supplant some third and fourth slot depth chart guys as the final two quarters commenced.
Preseason games have several items. And one is to find out who to cut. Currently, there are 90 guys on the training camp roster. In Week 1, that number will be just 53 players, plus another...
