Every spring, NFL players skip the team's offseason program and nobody docks their pay for it, because most of that program is voluntary on paper. The one piece that isn't: a mandatory minicamp, three days, up to 24 hours, that a veteran can be fined for missing (CBS Sports, SRC-03). Everything else is negotiated leverage dressed up as a workout schedule.
That gap — between what the rulebook calls voluntary and what actually happens on a practice field in May — is the whole story of the NFL offseason. The league and the players' union spent years writing rules specifically to stop teams from strong-arming players into offseason work, and the rules mostly hold. But "mostly" is doing a lot of work here, and the players who can actually afford to test that word are not the ones the rules were written to protect.
What actually happens during the NFL's voluntary offseason program?
The offseason program runs roughly nine weeks and splits into three phases under Article 21 of the collective bargaining agreement, each one loosening the restrictions on what a team is allowed to do with its players (NFLPA, SRC-01; NFL Football Operations, SRC-02). Workouts cannot begin before the first Monday in April for a team with a new head coach, or the third Monday in April for everyone else, per the NFLPA's published rules.
Phase One runs two weeks and is strictly "dead ball" — strength and conditioning, meetings, physical rehab, four hours a day, with only strength and conditioning coaches allowed on the field. Phase Two, three weeks long, lets position coaches onto the field for individual and group drills, but there's still no live contact and no offense-versus-defense work. Phase Three is where it starts to look like football: up to ten organized team activities (OTAs) spread across three to four weeks, with 7-on-7, 9-on-7 and full 11-on-11 drills allowed — helmets on, but no pads and no live contact. Players are paid a per diem at every step, and none of it is mandatory.
What's the difference between OTAs and mandatory minicamp?
OTAs are the voluntary practices inside Phase Three; mandatory minicamp is a separate, compulsory week that a club is allowed to hold once, also during Phase Three and usually in mid-June (NFLPA, SRC-01). It's the only part of the entire spring program a veteran cannot simply skip without consequence.
Minicamp compresses into three days: physicals on the first day, then practices Tuesday through Thursday, capped at 24 total hours on the field and ten hours a day, according to the NFLPA's rules. Each day includes two practices, and the second is limited to walk-through pace — no more building toward live contact than the OTAs allowed. Veterans are paid $500 a day for showing up; rookies get $285. Rookies have their own separate, earlier calendar: clubs can run a seven-week rookie program starting May 12, capped by one post-draft rookie minicamp weekend, per the NFL's own offseason operations release (SRC-02).
Can a player actually be fined for skipping voluntary workouts?
No — the rules explicitly bar a club from treating Phase One, Phase Two, or OTA attendance as anything but optional, and there's no fine structure attached to any of it. The only fine schedule in the whole program attaches to the mandatory minicamp, and it escalates fast for missing more than one day.
According to a CBA-sourced fine breakdown reported by CBS Sports, a veteran who skips minicamp entirely can be docked roughly $14,775 for the first missed day, with the total climbing to around $88,650 for missing all three (SRC-03). That reporting is from 2019, and the CBA's fine schedule adjusts over time, so treat the exact dollar figures as illustrative of scale rather than this year's number — but the mechanism it describes, an escalating per-day fine capped by three missed days, is the structure still in place. The same reporting named veterans who'd taken that hit anyway — Trent Williams and Darius Slay among them — which tells you something about who can absorb an $88,650 fine as the cost of staying home.
Why do some players skip voluntary practices if there's no penalty?
Because for a certain tier of player, the penalty was never financial to begin with — it's leverage, and it runs in both directions. A franchise-tagged player without a long-term deal, or a star angling for a renegotiation, has used a spring absence as a quiet form of protest for years; it costs him nothing under the CBA and it puts pressure on a front office without the drama of a formal holdout.
That's the take, and it survives contact with the record: the same reporting cycle that covers minicamp holdouts every June reliably features tagged or extension-seeking veterans sitting out, not fringe roster players. Here's the honest complication, though — that leverage only exists if you're good enough that the team needs you back more than it needs to make an example of you. A young player fighting for a 53-man roster spot doesn't get to test the boundary between "voluntary" and "expected."
For him, showing up to every rep of Phase One is not a choice in any meaningful sense, even though the rulebook insists it is. The word "voluntary" describes what the CBA permits a team to require. It does not describe what a locker room actually feels like in April.
| Phase | Length | Contact Level | Daily Pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phase One | 2 weeks | No football — strength & conditioning only | $340 |
| Phase Two | 3 weeks | Individual/group drills, no live contact | $340 |
| Phase Three (OTAs) | Up to 10 practice days | 7-on-7, 9-on-7, 11-on-11, no live contact | $340 |
| Mandatory Minicamp | 3 days, 24 hrs max | Walk-through pace, second practice each day | $500 vets / $285 rookies |
For a related business news perspective, read How the NFL Salary Cap Actually Turns TV Money Into Player Paychecks.
For more context, read How the 12-Team Playoff Actually Decides Who Gets In.
For more context, read How the NFL Actually Breaks a Playoff Tie.
For more context, read How NSF Certified for Sport Actually Vets a Supplement.