One of the biggest shocks I saw this weekend from a college football standpoint was that quarterback T.J. Finley, after Week 1 had already started, was planning on transferring to Georgia State. After seeing the news, I thought to myself, “There’s just no way that Finley still has eligibility remaining.”

Finley is now on his fifth school in six seasons, which feels much longer because he’s been a starter at every stop, starting with his true freshman season: LSU, Auburn, Texas State, Western Kentucky and now Georgia State. So how is Finley still eligible? Because he utilized the freebie year that college football afforded for the 2020 season and received a redshirt season. This is your reminder that all of the Covid year players have still not cycled out of the sport, but it’s nearing the end for them.

Now, according to NBC Sports’ Nicole Auerbach, more players want in the extra eligibility action. Per Auerbach, two Vanderbilt football players have filed a class action lawsuit against the NCAA over eligibility rules. The hope for them is that they earn the potential to play five seasons over five years of eligibility, rather than the four seasons over five seasons standard currently set by the NCAA.

Earlier this year, Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia, who isn’t involved in the newest lawsuit against the NCAA, won a case where he successfully claimed that the NCAA’s counting of junior college seasons toward players’ eligibility is a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Now on his third school in his sixth overall year as a starter, Pavia returned to be the Commadores’ quarterback for the 2025 season.

So what does this mean for the NFL and the Green Bay Packers? Well, first of all, if the new lawsuit is successful, then we’re almost certainly going to see fewer players available in the upcoming draft.

With big money being spent at the college level, it’s hard to blame these kids, either. For example, former Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers, who was drafted in the seventh round in April, reportedly turned down an $8 million offer to transfer to another program for the 2025 season. For perspective, that’s roughly the same Year 1 cashflow that first-round pick Josh Simmons will make ($8.2 million) this year on his rookie deal. Over the next three years of Simmons’ contract, he’ll earn $6.52 million total ($2.17 million per year). Ewers, whose only guarantees in his rookie contract are his $131,576 signing bonus, is probably regretting his decision not to stay in college for that extra year. He’s just one of three underclassmen quarterbacks to be drafted outside of the first round over the last three draft classes.

In this post-Covid, post-NIL era, Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst has repeatedly stated over and over again that he enjoyed plucking young talent in late rounds of these more well-developed classes. Success stories include fifth-round pick Dontayvion Wicks, fifth-round pick Kingsley Enagbare, fifth-round pick T.J. Slaton, sixth-round pick Karl Brooks, sixth-round pick Isaiah McDuffie, seventh-round pick Carrington Valentine and seventh-round pick Rasheed Walker. While none of them are All-Pros, they are certainly value selections for where Green Bay took them. Valentine, going into his third year in the league, for example, is only 23 years old and has 19 starts under his belt heading into 2025. Had he been a prospect in the 2025 draft, he probably would have been a second- or third-round pick.

The Packers’ scouts, and Gutekunst, are already hard at work on the next draft class. There’s some uncertainty on the horizon about college eligibility, but the good news is that Green Bay has done a pretty good job of leveraging these more well-aged draft classes to find value on Day 3 of the draft. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if the Packers had more of those opportunities. They seem to be adjusting well to this era.

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