The NFL’s OTA season is here. It's always a good time to review the definitions of "voluntary" and "mandatory."
The former refers to the workouts in late May. “Mandatory” describes the veteran minicamp teams will hold the first two weeks of June.
For help, here’s what merriam-webster.com, the popular dictionary website, says “voluntary” means. It even uses it in a sentence: "Participation in the program is completely voluntary."
It's as if they know what time of year it is. Or, it's as if they know some player, coach, executive, reporter, commentator or fan is about throw a full-scale tantrum over a player missing a "voluntary" workout.
For example, Derrick Henry last year was torn a new one by Titans teammate Jurrell Casey for not being on hand for the first day of the offseason workout program.
"It definitely puts that little check mark in the back of my mind and lets me know who I can count on, who I can’t count on," Casey said, according to the Tennessean.
Casey was worried about who he could count on … in April, on the first day the doors were open. Henry was back at Alabama taking classes, likely because he knew he could not count on Casey to take them for him, since that would be ridiculous.
No word on whether it was an English class, although Henry's teammate might be the one who needs one, because he might not know what “voluntary" means.
Mike Mularkey, their coach, seemed to know — he just also seemed to feel the word should be synonymous with "mandatory," because his reaction to Henry’s absence was, "Maybe I used to get disappointed. I have no control over it."
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This is business as usual in the NFL. You don't have to be in the building every single day the rules allow, in sight of your coaches and teammates, showing them your commitment and desire. It’s just that, if you don’t, you’ll always feel never-at-all-subtle pressure to be there or to have an acceptable excuse.
Even though, by those same rules, you don’t need an excuse at all, nor is anybody entitled to accept it or not.
It’s old, and its tired. It should be mandatory for everybody involved to, just for one offseason, let that go.
It isn’t yet, though.
So far this year, Tom Brady in New England and Aaron Donald in LA, among others, have been placed under the microscope for not being there for Day 1 of offseason workouts. It really is part of the NFL’s offseason routine — do a head count for camps, OTAs and the like, see who’s missing, dig for reasons, grill head coach and teammates about what’s going on and what it means.
The disclaimer is always included: Workouts are voluntary, but ...
It's exhausting. It needs to stop. It sucks up energy that could be applied elsewhere.
It won’t stop, though. The 2018 offseason is off to that kind of start already. The NFL has flunked another English exam.
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For what it’s worth, Henry reported for workouts when he was done doing something that was nobody’s business but his own. Believe it or not, he showed up in great shape. At the end of the season, he played a big role in the Titans' wild-card playoff win over the Chiefs.
"There is no problem with Derrick," his position coach Sylvester Croom said after Henry eventually reported, according to the Titans website. "The guy was in school, he is here now, and he is working. So we are moving forward from there."
NFL teams, players and coaches alike should have moved forward from this entire mindset long ago.
