What Do NFL Players Do in the Off Season?

An NFL season is about five months long. The off season is about seven. So the honest answer to what players do with it is: most of their year.

It isn't a holiday, but it isn't football either. Here's what the calendar actually looks like.

February and March: stop

The weeks right after a season ends are the only stretch where a player genuinely does nothing. Bodies that have absorbed seventeen games plus a preseason need it.

This is also when the surgeries happen. A player who's been managing a shoulder or a knee since October gets it fixed now, because that's the only window long enough to operate and rehab before camp. A lot of injuries you never heard about during the season turn into March procedures.

Free agency opens in March, so for players without a contract this is the least restful part of the year. Everybody else watches the roster change around them.

April to June: the program

Teams run a voluntary off-season program that starts in April and moves through three phases.

• Phase one is strength, conditioning and rehab. No footballs, no coaches running drills.
• Phase two adds on-field work with coaches, individual drills and position work, but no offense against defense.
• Phase three is organized team activities, the OTAs you hear about, where full team drills happen without live contact.

The word "voluntary" does a lot of work there. A rookie fighting for a roster spot treats it as mandatory. An established veteran with guaranteed money sometimes trains on his own instead, which is usually what a "holdout from voluntary workouts" headline means.

There's one genuinely mandatory piece: a minicamp, usually in June, that veterans have to attend.

What the training actually looks like

Most players work with a private coach rather than only team staff, and the work splits three ways.

Strength. The goal is usually to keep the muscle you had, not to add more. Playing weight is a specific number and being ten pounds over it in July is a problem.

Movement. Speed, change of direction, and the joint work that keeps a body from breaking. Plenty of players do yoga or pilates, and a few have made a whole second career out of recovery routines.

Position skills. Receivers catch hundreds of balls a day. Linemen work hand placement. Quarterbacks organize their own throwing sessions with teammates, which is where the phrase "Texas summer workouts" comes from, and it's genuinely voluntary and genuinely important for timing.

Film study runs alongside all of it. A lot of what looks like time off is a player sitting with a tablet.

The rest of the year

Careers are short and the average one ends before thirty, so smart players use the off season on what comes next.

• Family. The single most common answer, and the least reported. In season a player is at the facility six days a week.
• Business. Restaurants, real estate, media, investing. Many players are building the thing that pays them at 35.
• Charity. Camps and foundations, most of it happening in June and July.
• School. A steady number go back and finish degrees.
• Appearances and endorsements. Commercials get filmed now because there's no other time.

Where signings fit

This is the part that touches what we do. The memorabilia calendar runs on the off season.

A player who's in meetings and games from July through January has no time to sit at a table and sign three hundred helmets. So private signings, card show appearances and contracted sessions cluster between February and June. The signed items that reach the market in the fall were mostly signed in the spring.

It's also why a player's signature can get easier or harder to find from one year to the next. A quarterback who did two signings last off season and none this year hasn't changed as a player. His supply just changed, and our post on which signed quarterback jerseys are worth the money explains what that does to price.

If you've ever been to one of those sessions as a fan, our guide on how autograph signing events work covers tickets, inscriptions and the rest of it.

Then camp

Training camp opens in late July and the off season is over. Players report at a target weight, having done the work or not, and the difference shows up fast.

The cliché that seasons are won in the off season is mostly true, and it's mostly about who kept doing the boring parts in May.

While you wait for football

The off season is long for fans too. If you're filling it, we sell authenticated signed full-size helmets, mini helmets and jerseys, every one with a certificate from a third-party authenticator. Our live breaks run every day of the year, including the quiet months. And if you're new to signed memorabilia, start with what a COA actually guarantees.