When will the NFL labor dispute start to hurt?

The general wisdom here is the players will not start to hurt until they start missing game checks this fall. Conventional wisdom says the fans won’t care (for the most part) until they sit down on Sundays this fall and NFL football is not on TV. Most fans have taken a wait and see approach, but I have to warn everyone that we are fastly approaching a date where this labor dispute will start messing with the 2011 NFL season. In fact we may already be at said point.

Sure this time of year NFL team’s and fans are usually working on signing their draft picks, finding some value in the free agency market and of course holding OTA’s and mini camps. All of that may not mean much to fans now, but teams that need work and teams that are trying to stay elite will miss this time should the lockout drag on much longer.

Large chunks of offensive and defensive schemes are generally installed during this period. While that may not mean much to fans right now, if this lockout drags on their teams will not be as good come the season. On top of that teams with new coaches or dare I say new QB’s are losing valuable preparation time as the lockout continues.

It has been said that the devil is in the details. NFL teams are missing time to working on said details and that will show up on the field whenever this league gets back to work. It is far past the time to end the madness, before serious damage is done to America’s most popular sport.