It would be nice to clear up the facts about when Gordon has to report this season.
First, there is the issue of what entitles a player to unrestricted free agency. Upon expiration of a player’s contract, if he has accrued 4 or more seasons in the NFL, he becomes an unrestricted free agent.
An accrued season is defined as a season with 6 or more regular-season games on a club’s active/inactive, reserve/injured or reserve/physically unable to perform lists.
Many articles have said he has to report no later than after week 10, apparently based on a belief that he needs to accrue another season (or just taking something written elsewhere as fact without understanding the rules). Gordon doesn’t need to accrue another season — he has already accrued 4 seasons in the NFL.
Next, I have read on another message board that players under contract have to report by the Tuesday following week 10 in order to be eligible to play the rest of the season, but that post did not contain any source reference. I know
this is true for franchise players and transition players, but Gordon is not in either of those categories.
My understanding has been that Gordon has to report for at least one game to avoid having his contract tolled, which would mean it carries over to next season with the exact same terms. (And the player does not have to play in that game.) Precedent with Joey Galloway has shown that reporting by the midpoint of the season (i.e., before the 9th game) prevents a contract from tolling. The language in the arbitrator’s ruling implies that possibly reporting for as little as a single game could be enough, but no player has tested that with a holdout longer than Galloway’s. Pretty good explanation of that in
this PFT article.
Does anyone have a link that seems to be definitive on this? There is a big difference between:
- Must report by "midseason" (e.g., the Tuesday following the week 8 game), like @electric Ape stated above
- Must report by the Tuesday following the week 10 game
- Must report for just 1 game, maybe the week 17 game
I suspect it is probably academic, because given the weak RB market, I doubt Gordon is going to be willing to forego much, if any, of his $5.6M salary this season. So I expect he will miss no more than few games and maybe none, even if he doesn't get a contract. He can cloak it as not wanting to let his teammates down on a potential Super Bowl contender to save face. Of course, I never expected Bell to do what he did last year...
Still, without clarity on this, Gordon is on my DND list.