The safety market in free agency has picked up a bit over the past week, but former San Francisco 49ers safety Eric Reid remains available. Last week at the Stanford Pro Day, Reid told local media that his agent had been in touch with a couple teams. He said numbers and “business” had not been discussed yet.
While we wait for rumors to drop of any kind of specific interest in Reid, the annual NFL owners’ meeting wrapped up on Wednesday. Commissioner Roger Goodell met with the media to wrap things up, and he got a question about Reid’s status. Goodell gave the canned answer he gave last year whenever he was asked about Colin Kaepernick remaining unsigned.
“The 32 teams make their individual decisions on the players that they think are going to best help their franchises. Those are decisions that they have to make. They do that every day. They do that with the best interest of winning and putting the best franchises together. And they’ll make those decisions. I’m not directly involved with those.”
The safety market got off to a slow start, but has started to pick up some steam over the past week. NFL teams get their offseason workout programs going in April, with new coaches getting the start the first week of the month, and returning coaches getting the start the third week of the month.
The programs open with strength and conditioning work, and then one-on-one work. OTAs, where teams can really work in implementing their playbooks, take place in May, and mandatory minicamp is in June. Plenty of veterans won’t sign until after OTAs, but that’s the practice timeline for the next couple months.