During the NFL lockout coaches and players are not supposed to communicate at all. No talking about the upcoming season, no checking in on who's staying in shape and definitely not talking about the playbook. Sort of like tampering, that's what the NFL says the rules are. In actual practice, though, coaches and players reportedly still talk.
Mike Freeman of CBSSports.com recently reported that, despite the rules against coach and player communication during the lockout, plenty of players and teams -- Freeman says one player estimates 25 percent of the league -- are still keeping in touch.
"While lockout rules are supposed to prevent contact between players and coaches," Freeman wrote last week, "when it comes to the team workouts, both sides are utilizing Skype, e-mail, text-messaging and good, old-fashioned phone calls to update coaches on the progress of group workouts, what players are doing to stay in shape and even personal issues."
Is that happening with the Kansas City Chiefs?
C Rudy Niswanger tells Bob Fescoe of 610 Sports that he's not hearing about any of this supposed contact between players and coaches.
"You know, that's a crazy issue," Niswanger told Fescoe on Tuesday morning.. "To be honest with you, I don't think much. I think it's getting a little blown out of proportion than it really is in my opinion. Am I hearing about all of it? No."
So it appears Chiefs players are following the rules. There haven't been a lot of player-only workouts that we've heard of so maybe there's not much to check in on anyway. That said, even if a bunch of Chiefs players were breaking the rules, we wouldn't expect Niswanger to say so and we wouldn't expect the league to do anything about it (as the lack of punishments doled out for tampering have demonstrated).