The National Football League is the premiere sports organization in the United States of America. They have surpassed Major League Baseball as America's game, especially in terms of viewership. Nearly the entire country tunes in for the Super Bowl and millions watch every Sunday afternoon and evening to watch their favorite teams.

One of the more difficult things about how things are in the NFL is player development. So many players will come into the league and not get the playing time and coaching they need to succeed. It's a harsh reality of the business where you need to win and every game is important.

---

When you look at all the other major sports, they have minor leagues. The MLB has four levels of minor league teams with some having six teams for player development. The NHL has the AHL and can leave their draft picks for years with their college, junior or professional team overseas. The NBA has the G League with teams relatively close in proximity to their parent club.

It's about time the NFL has a minor league system of their own.

---

The NFL needs a minor league

The NFL has tried multiple times to have some kind of feeder system. They experimented with NFL Europe multiple times in the 1990s and it worked relatively well. They disbanded it, but not before it became the genesis of future Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner, as well as fellow Super Bowl quarterbacks Jake Delhomme and Brad Johnson.

That success is very important in this conversation, especially when you look at the current quarterback landscape. Players like Geno Smith and Sam Darnold have seen a major resurgence over the last few years. One of the reasons why they have seen their success is due to their new environments giving them the coaching and infrastructure that they needed from the start.

---

The top quarterbacks who are being drafted aren't getting the kind of nurturing and development they need due to multiple factors. The pressure of turning around a struggling franchise that earned a top pick is stressful enough. Meanwhile, most of those teams aren't ready to help a new quarterback. Look at some of the great quarterbacks who struggled early on in their careers from being thrust into a bad situation.

Bryce Young and Anthony Richardson have already been benched in the first eight weeks of their second seasons due to both their own failures but also the failure of the organization as a whole. For a multitude of reasons, they haven't succeeded yet, but you could argue that both players needed to sit until they had the infrastructure to thrive. Look at Patrick Mahomes. He sat for a year and it did him wonders, throwing 50 touchdown passes and winning the MVP award in his first season as a starter.

---

Some teams and ownership groups get a little bit too impatient. Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell got a front seat to that in 2019 when they put Dwayne Haskins in before he was ready.

O'Connell brings scar tissue to the job of developing McCarthy. As Washington's offensive coordinator in 2019, O'Connell had a front seat to the franchise's botched work with first-round draft pick Dwayne Haskins. Despite initial plans to take a methodical approach to his development, coach Jay Gruden put Haskins on the field in Week 4 — long before he was ready. Haskins struggled for two seasons, was released in 2021 and spent his final NFL season as the Steelers' No. 3 quarterback. (Haskins died in April 2022 after being struck by a truck in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.)

"When we selected him, we had a lot of confidence in what he could become under the right circumstances and development and timetable," O'Connell said, "and that didn't exactly end up being the mindset just a few short months later."

---

How a minor league could work

Right now, the only things available in the football world for development are:

• Practice squad
• UFL

The practice squad allows you to practice with the team and grow within the organization but it only allows you three elevations a year with some of those resulting in just a few snaps. That is better than nothing in terms of development, but as has been discussed often with Richardson, the best way to develop a player is to play.

While spring league football has been good and allowed some players to find jobs in the NFL, it doesn't have an official affiliation with the league. Plus, asking players to play in both the spring and fall can put an extra wear and tear on the body that isn't necessary. 

---

How do we fix the development of players? Simple: add a minor league that runs concurrent to the NFL season.

You can have somewhat smaller rosters of around 40 players and that can also act as the team's practice squad. Pay them a similar amount of money to what the practice squad makes and they can play in either a smaller local stadium or at the stadiums that their NFL franchise plays in. 

Secondly, play the games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. You can get television deals for NFL adjacent games, including airing them on the NFL Network and possibly the regional networks across the nation. There is a thirst for football during the season that isn't there during the spring. ESPN already dedicates Tuesday and Wednesday nights during October and November to Conference USA and MAC football games. You can pencil in the minor league games in some of those slots.

As of right now, you can't schedule them on Friday and Saturday from the second weekend of September through the second weekend of December due to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961.

---

Adding these games will be crucial for multiple aspects of football:

• More coaches getting opportunities
• Creates hundreds of jobs
• Players getting in-game reps for development, especially at quarterback
• Officials getting crucial development
• Broadcasters getting more experience
• The NFL makes more money

Honestly, it's a win-win for everyone and down the line, a major win for the players at the NFL level and quarterbacks like Richardson and Young who could be sent down to get more reps without the pressure.