Nick Caserio: NFL players going back to college is “ridiculous,” but “doesn’t really impact our job”

More and more NFL figures are addressing the current chaos in college football. And most of them don’t like it.

Texans G.M. Nick Caserio joined the chorus on Tuesday, with two observations.

“First of all, it’s ridiculous,” Caserio told reporters. “Secondly, it doesn’t really impact our job. The whole concept, we could spend an hour having that discussion. It doesn’t necessarily materially impact kind of what we’re doing specific to training camp and those types of things. If they are in college, if they go back to college, you just evaluate them as if you would through the college lens, through the college process. We didn’t have any players that fell under that restraining order so it wasn’t really going to affect us. Conceptually it’s affected basketball as well. There was a kid that went back to Alabama that was in the G-League. Look, if you’re a professional player then you’re a professional player. To go from being a professional player to a college athlete or amateur athlete, the whole thing is kind of ridiculous.”

But is it really ridiculous to expect the NCAA to adopt a five-year rule while also denying a fifth year to those who didn’t have access to one? Plenty of players who entered the draft would have stayed put if they’d known they’d have another year.

All problems in college sports trace to a system that denied compensation to players for as long as possible and the problems the reckoning has created. The players are simply reacting to the circumstances, and attempting to secure fair treatment under the relevant rules.

Regardless, the process of sorting out who will and won’t be able to play college football this year after spending time on 90-man rosters continues. And the NFL will proceed unaffected by the situation, except for the fact that the players who return to college can’t be signed by NFL teams during the 2026 season.