Coming out of Arena Football University in Chicago, the AF1 released their timeline for teams to sign players for the 2025 season, as well as a couple adjustments to their approach with expansion teams.
Free agency had already begun in the IFL & NAL a few weeks back, so AF1 finally has a date on the books and it is a mere 96 hours away!
If you haven't read the release from AF1, it is linked below. But if you want the 'Off The Wall Cliff Notes But Not Really Cliff Notes Because It's Just As Long As The Press Release' cut, then you're in luck -- keep scrolling, brother!
Some key takeaways and my thoughts:
"Starting Tuesday, October 1, 2024, all founding teams of AF1 may begin to re-sign players to letters of intent (LOI) for the 2025 season. Players will be signed to the LOI, and the league will process all signings to make them official. Signings will not be official until the league office has processed the LOI."
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight (2008)
October 1st is when we'll finally start to see some of these rosters take shape! Just like typical free agency you see in the NFL, teams will get an opportunity to re-sign some of their players from last season.
We can expect to see the "Darius Prince signs with Albany" & "Freddie Booth-Lloyd signs with Orlando" graphics coming to a social page near you very, very soon.
But, to me, what is even more very interesting:
"Also, beginning on October 1, 2024, the eleven announced teams of Arena Football One will be able to sign players who were not on a roster to LOI. This will be an exciting time for all Arena Football fans as their favorite teams begin to fill out their rosters for 2025."
That means players that were in the IFL or NAL last season and rookies straight out of college are also fair game to sign with any of the AF1 teams on October 1st -- expansion teams included. Every team will be eligible to sign players who were NOT on a roster of the 8 original teams that came over from the AFL when the AF1 was former earlier this month.
I'd expect to see the expansion teams (Wilkes-Barre, Stockton, Monterrey, Ari...nvm) really digging into the player pool that has IFL & NAL experience to start to build out their roster and get a foundation set. There's so many talented players from both of those leagues that would be willing to make the leap. But the first handful of signings for the founding AF1 teams are probably going to be some familiar faces in familiar colors from the 2024 season.
This also puts teams that haven't fully announced coaching staffs on a time crunch to get the ink dry on some agreements and get going! Players are going to be snatched up quickly you'll want to at least have a shot at some of the guys that can come in and make a difference for an expansion team in their inaugural season.
"Beginning on October 15, teams may also sign players who were on another team’s roster."
THIS is where things will get kicked up a notch. Who is gonna jump ship?! A team like Albany last year had a lot of playmakers, but ultimately there was only one ball. Former Firebirds WR Daquan Patten already signed with the Beaumount Renegades of the NAL.
Do we see more former Firebirds go to other teams to get a chance to be the guy on another team? Not just with them, but Salina & Southwest Kansas had a sneaky good rosters as well -- especially on defense. Do we see some of those guys make a leap to a bigger market like an Orlando, Nashville or Albany? Or even jumping to one of the expansion teams to kick things off in those markets?
I personally loved how regional teams in terms of where players were from in the early era of
arena football. A team from Iowa would have a lot of players from the midwest, a team from Tampa would have a lot of players from Florida, etc. Do we see more of that when the flood gates of true free agency open up? Brb, looking up hometowns of every 2024 roster.
"Due to the condensed nature of this signing period, and after collaborative discussions with all teams, we have decided not to conduct an expansion draft for the 2025 AF1 season. All players will be signed and allocated to teams via free agency."
I'm going to be honest with you guys. Are we in the trust tree?
I think the expansion draft was not a good idea and I am glad they ditched it.
The reason why I say that is ultimately because the league's game day pay is going to be $400 per player, which is solid in the arena football world comparative to the landscape of arena and indoor football at the moment, but just not enough to potentially ship a player off to a team or city he may not want to play for.
If they were paying 90s/2000s era wages where this could be a player's full time jobs, then I'd say go for it. Ship them off. But the reality is that some players have families that they are supporting and obligations off the field, and truthfully they are probably working other jobs in addition to playing football to provide for them.
Strictly hypothetically: if a player is from Orlando, lives there, has a job/career/business there and plays for the Predators, if he gets picked by Stockton in the expansion draft and he doesn't want to uproot his life to move across the country for the season for a $400 per game day paycheck -- what would that do to his playing career?
Is he just not able to play anymore unless he bends the knee and goes across the country? What does that do to a team who picks a player thinking they would come and they don't end up wanting to?
I think the expansion draft created way more problems than it would have solved and I'm happy to see they got rid of it.
We have the date, and now we wait. Who do you think is going to be the first big signing on October 1st? Who do you think jumps ship on October 15th?!
Comments