Panthers HC Says Players Are Entering NFL 'Underdeveloped' Due to Transfer, NIL Era

The wider adoption of the transfer portal and the dawn of the NIL era have conferred plenty of benefits toward college football players. They also might be leaving players less ready for the NFL.

That was the argument put forward by Carolina Panthers head coach Dave Canales.

Canales told The Athletic's Nick Kosmider it can be helpful to watch a draft prospect operate in multiple schemes across his career. Changing schools can have a downside in his mind, though.

"We're getting underdeveloped players, at times, because of their transfers," the coach said. "Physically underdeveloped, as well. They are with this strength coach and now they’re not even with a team for a spring. Now, they are with that strength coach for the fall. You can't really get that much stronger during the season when you're playing and recovering. So players are missing out on critical physical development periods. During summer and other parts of the offseason, they're not with teams. Veteran players in the NFL go to trainers when they're not with us for four-and-half, five weeks in the summer. A lot of these guys haven't found those yet. So there is a little bit of a gap that requires us to do a lot of evaluation on the front end and have a plan for those guys."

Similar arguments have been made about NBA draft prospects predating the transfer portal. Playing one season of college ball gives aspirants a little more seasoning, but that's still not a lot of time to learn intricate tactical systems or even sharpen up basic fundamentals.

That's where NFL teams had a bit of an advantage. With players required to wait three years after graduating high school to move on to the pros, they were arriving much closer to a finished product.

Granted, Canales' comments elide how the old college athletics model had pitfalls of its own in terms of developing talent.

Even if they stayed at one school, players may have had multiple head coaches and/or coordinators. And as far back as 2015, Kevin Clark wrote for the Wall Street Journal about how people around the NFL thought college quarterbacks were lacking basic skills that were required for the job.

At the end of the day, there will never be a perfect system to prepare players for the pros because that's not a college coach's primary objective. Their job security rests more on whether they win games rather than how many of their players thrive in the NFL.

Maybe the paradigm starts to shift if North Carolina's experiment in hiring Bill Belichick starts paying immediate dividends.

Should that happen, Canales and his NFL coaching peers will be very thankful.