NFL Lockout Limbo: Undrafted Free Agents Left in the Dark

Zack Pianalto is well acquainted with being patient.

In 2005, as a junior wide receiver at Springdale (Ark.) High School, Pianalto was already receiving looks from several Division 1-A programs. At any other high school in Arkansas he would have been a star. At Springdale, he was merely quarterback Mitch Mustain’s fourth option—behind a trio of future Razorbacks.

Pianalto was forced to wait his turn.

During the summer prior to his senior season, he suffered a broken collarbone while playing in a 7-on-7 passing tournament in Hoover, Ala.

Pianalto rehabbed the injury for 10 weeks—only to re-injure the same bone in his second game back and lose the remainder of his senior season.

While at North Carolina, Pianalto suffered a sprained right ankle, a subtalar dislocation of the same ankle, and two broken fibulae.

In total, he was forced sit out for 17 weeks and two bowl games during his four seasons in Chapel Hill.

That broad assortment of injuries was largely responsible for his descent from a potential second day selection, to undrafted free agent.

“I worked so hard to put myself in position, going into my senior year, to be a top five tight end. And, I did. But injuries derailed it really quickly,” Pianalto said.

His hard luck turned worse when the NFL’s owners imposed a lockout.

Under normal circumstances, he—along with hundreds of other undrafted players—would have signed with an NFL team within days of the draft.

These are not normal circumstances.

“We had some teams contact us during the draft about possibly drafting me, and some putting in a word about free agency while they could still call us,” Pianalto told me. “But, once the last pick was in, teams could no longer contact us.”

Which, in a weird twist of irony, is where all of those injuries and all of that waiting have actually prepared him for the awkward position that they have put him in.

Pianalto, and undrafted players like him, can do nothing but wait. 

“Right now I am in Chapel Hill training,” Pianalto says of his sudden abundance of free time. “(The lockout) really does put a hold on your life. I should be looking for a job right now, or going back to grad school. But I simply can't, because I have to be ready when this thing breaks. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity I cannot afford to not be ready.”

He’s right.

Without a rookie camp, there is no margin for error for undrafted free agents looking to stick on an NFL roster. Which is why ex-college stars across the country are organizing their own workouts.

All of these newcomers will be directly behind the 8-ball as soon as the lockout is lifted. Most of them won’t make it in the league.

From a player like Pianalto, who has seen this game repeatedly take so much from his body, many would ask ‘why.’ Why continue to play? Why put your life on hold, for the reward of being thrust into nearly impossible circumstances?

For him, the answer is simple.

“I just truly love the game,” he said. “I love everything about it: the weightlifting, the conditioning, the game planning. I love going into a hostile environment and beating a team you’re not supposed to. It all makes it worthwhile.”

That seems to be the part that gets lost in all of this.

For every billionaire owner that would prefer to stay indoors during the sweltering month of August, there are a countless number of guys like Pianalto that would give anything to be outdoors in a helmet and shoulder pads. For every Reggie Bush or Chad Johnson, there are hundreds of guys who are not millionaires and need their paycheck just as much as you or I.

All of them, including Bush and Johnson, love the game enough to devote their lives to it and sacrifice their bodies for it.

Think Stephen Ross could say the same?

“It sucks,” Pianalto said.

I would agree.