Should The NFL Create A Developmental League?

According to many sports experts, Major League Baseball has the best player development setup of any sport in the world. Each major league team has three rookie league teams, a Class A-short season team, a Class A-advanced team, a Double AA team, and a Triple AAA team. Players must prove themselves at each level before getting to the major leagues. Nobody in baseball is handed a job, every job must be earned at the end of the day. Many wonder if the NFL could use a developmental system, not to the depth of baseball’s, but just one developmental team per NFL team.

The NFL tried something like this a number of years back, it was called NFL Europe, but it ended in a miserable failure. This was mainly due to teams having no control over what the players they sent to NFL Europe did.

The NFL could use a developmental league, but something in which each NFL team is in control of what their developmental team does, which was not the case for NFL Europe. The developmental team would run the same schemes, use the same playbook, and teach the same techniques as the NFL teams that are in control of them. A setup where the developmental league teams play in the spring would be bad as well. The NFL would need to set it up so the developmental league would play right along side of them, week by week in the fall. Our idea is that the NFL should get rid of Thursday Night football and instead commit Thursday nights then to developmental league action. Their would be certain rules that would be put into place. For example, if you play in the developmental league game on Thursday, you can’t play Sunday for your NFL team.

What would a developmental league do for the on the field product? Well it would make it better. Instead of having young talent standing on the sidelines waiting for an opportunity, they could be playing the developmental league and getting better. This would make the on the field product better then because when these young players step onto the field, they are ready to play.