How much should we care when players miss OTAs?

For the third day in a row, Eric Berry, Marcus Peters and Justin Houston are all missing from the Kansas City Chiefs OTAs.

Andy Reid had to answer the question on Thursday. Then he had to answer it again. And then another time. The Kansas City Chiefs head coach was asked from a few angles about the veteran players missing from the team’s organized team activities (OTAs) held this week, the first set of voluntary OTAs that will continue, off and on, into June.

For the third day in a row, three key Chiefs defenders were missing from team workouts: All-Pro safety Eric Berry, outside linebacker Justin Houston and shutdown cornerback Marcus Peters. Reid was asked several times about the absences, whether or not it concerned him and whether or not he even knew about them.

"“It’s voluntary, so they can be here or not be here, it’s up to them,” Reid said. “I knew about all of them.”"

The word “voluntary” is key here for both sides, although one man’s voluntary is another man’s necessary in the NFL. On paper, voluntary means that a person can do something if he/she likes or not, but the moment a player does not appear at these kinds of functions is the moment social media is abuzz with rumors, concerns or even angry tirades and rants from fans wondering where the player is at. Fans question a player’s work ethic, leadership, desire and commitment if they don’t do something that’s labeled as voluntary.

In other words, it’s voluntary with a price.

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The level of physical punishment suffered by players through the course of a 16-game regular season (and then some more in the playoffs), not including mandatory minicamp, training camp, etc. can be grueling. Injuries can fail to disappear completely because there’s never a long enough period of rest and recovery. Players on the fringe for their jobs could forgo a much needed and well-deserved rest during this time because, despite the fact that it’s supposed to be voluntary, the NFL is all about the present. Loyalty can be difficult to find at times.

For dominant defenders like Houston or Berry or Peters, that’s not a problem at all, and maybe that’s why they have decided to skip these particular sessions. They’ve been there. They know what they’re doing. They know the demands of the coming season, and they’re preparing themselves accordingly. They read the rules and it says they don’t have to be there, so they’re not.

It’s hard to blame them. If any of us had a boss that says they’re having a voluntary Saturday workday, many of us would not bother with more work than what we already have to do. While it’s not a one-to-one correlation, the comparison can at least hold long enough to make the point.

That said, the other side of this should be noted—that maybe the angry fans have something legitimate amidst their emotional outbursts. Everyone admits that preparation is key, that the work done in the dog days of summer actually help bring a team together. It’s knowing the playbook inside and out so it becomes second nature. It’s the chemistry and mentorship that happens in practice day after day. It’s making sure everyone is on the same page heading into a season with very high expectations. We praise the guy who stays after practice to take extra reps, so it makes sense that we’d also rip the guy who fails to even show up.

Even more, these guys are paid pretty handsomely. Comparing a Saturday workday for most of us who make a very small percentage of what the Chiefs players make doesn’t feel similar enough to compare. The argument could be made that if we all made millions of dollars, we would also feel good enough to attend whatever the team wanted us to be at.

It’s hard to know how much we should read into these absences as fans, but there’s something here that rings untrue in Andy Reid’s words, that it’s not just as simple as saying, “It’s voluntary” and then shrugging it off. It also doesn’t feel right to make it into a life-or-death situation, as if Eric Berry missing a three practices in May will keep him from making a game-saving interception in October.

The answer is probably somewhere in the tension between both sides, that these players have every right to be in Cancun or Kansas City right now, since it’s voluntary, but that it would be nice if there was some explanation offered. Both sides show some merit, even if it’s usually the case for emotions to enter in and take it too far in either direction.

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