Former Vikings QB is Back in the News
Teddy Bridgewater, a former Vikings QB, is back in the news.
A while ago, Mr. Bridgewater got in trouble for being generous with some of the players on the high school team he was coaching. He used his own money to help the guys get to the field, eat, and so on. The powerful people governing things deemed it an unfair advantage, leading to a legal change in the state of Florida so that coaches can now spend to a set limit to support young football players.
Former Vikings QB Teddy Bridgewater Sparks a Legal Change
Mike Florio used to be a lawyer. He’s now a football writer. Anything legal and football therefore fits neatly within his Florio’s abilities.
Check out some of the background on Pro Football Talk: “Lions quarterback Teddy Bridgewater took a break from playing in 2023 to become the coach at his former Miami high school. In 2024, Bridgewater stepped down after revealing that he had used his own money to cover expenses for his players — transportation, recovery, and pre-game meals.”
Not long afterwards, there’s added clarity about how the law has changed to fix what was wrong with Bridgewater’s previous spending.
“The law allows middle-school and high-school head coaches,” Florio writes, “to spend up to $15,000 of their own funds to support student-athletes with food, transportation and recovery services.” And then there’s a reflection on how the newfound freedom could be abused: “How will anyone accurately track expenditures? And what’s to stop the coach from becoming the conduit for boosters to funnel more than $15,000 to players?”
A final thought: “Regardless, Florida has acknowledged the fact that there’s no harm in letting football coaches help their players. The question becomes whether the limit will be respected, or whether it will be abused in the name of chasing wins.”
In football, ultra competitive coaches will strain the limits of laws and rules to gain an edge. Sometimes, shameless coaches will race past those laws without making the smallest effort to tap the brakes. So, Florio is right to note that opening the door to spending on players may lead to overspending on players in a manner that gives certain teams an unfair advantage.
As it relates to Bridgewater, it’s hard to quibble with his approach. Call me old fashioned, but I do find it hard to criticize the man for feeding high school kids.
At basically every step of his NFL journey did Bridgewater prove himself to be a fantastic leader who is well-respected by those around him. So, too, did he thrive as a coach, in no small part due to being willing to help his players, going so far as to spend his own cash to help them.
Chosen at No. 32 in the 2014 NFL Draft, Teddy Bridgewater was a good quarterback but not a great quarterback. He isn’t the world’s best athlete and his arm strength will never get mistaken for that of Patrick Mahomes. Where Bridgewater is so impressive, though, is within his intangibles: toughness, leadership, charisma, brains, and so on. Hard to get better than him in that area of football.
The veteran passer is functioning as a backup in Detroit, playing for a bargain deal coming in at $1.8 million, per OTC. Maybe he’ll tuck away some of that money so he can someday help more young fellas pursue football.
