Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy was a guest on WTMJ in Madison, Wisconsin to discuss a range of topics, but mostly the Packers choke job in the NFC playoffs after going 15-1 in the regular season. As far as that goes, we don't really care, but he also addressed his plans heading into the offseason and I thought one comment he made about the new CBA's affect on player development was really interesting.
"The new CBA has taken the off-season program out and broken it down from 15 weeks to 9 weeks with the first 3 weeks of that we have no interaction at all from player to coach. It's strictly training and conditioning. It's really put a lot of limits on the off-season program and frankly it's a detriment to the development of younger players in this league in my opinion."
The players' pretense for demanding these new restrictions was that less of this off-season work would keep them healthier during the season. This past season seems to blow that theory out of the water and in the end they may just have wanted to do less work... but the fact remains that the players did say that this wan meant to prolong their careers.
However, it could be very ironic if this lack of offseason work and interaction with coaches ends up shortening careers as some players don't develop to the potential they might have under the old offseason programs.
Whatever the fact, these are the new rules for the next 10 years, so players and coaches alike will have to find a "new normal" and innovate some new ways to make sure player development doesn't suffer.