Four practices into Atlanta Falcons training camp, Bijan Robinson is everywhere except where fans want to see him most. He’s on the field, he’s working off to the side, he’s around his teammates — but he hasn’t actually put on a helmet and joined practice.

Jahmyr Gibbs is doing something very similar in Detroit. Vita Vea showed up in Tampa Bay after asking for a trade, but he’s been held out of practice with what the team is calling a minor tweak. Tuli Tuipulotu opened Chargers camp without pads, eased into individual work, and still hasn’t taken part in full team drills.

And just like that, the first real storyline of training camp is here again: a handful of very good players standing near football, but not quite playing it.

It’s become a familiar, slightly frustrating rhythm. Fans wait months for football to return, only to spend the first week of camp parsing coach-speak and trying to figure out whether “limited participation” actually means anything at all. Nobody shows up for training camp hoping the biggest attraction is contract negotiations playing out in real time.

But as annoying as it is to watch, the “hold-in” has become one of the most effective tools players have.

When a player is already under contract, this is about as much leverage as he can realistically create. He shows up, stays around the team, goes to meetings, and avoids the heavy fines that come with simply staying home. But by not fully practicing, he also withholds the one thing teams actually need from him on the field — and makes sure everyone knows the deal still isn’t done.

The CBA Built A Better Workaround

Traditional holdouts used to be pretty straightforward. A player would just stay home, the team would start tossing out fines, and eventually both sides would usually meet somewhere in the middle and fold those missed days into a new deal. The player lost out on camp reps, sure, but he still had a real shot at applying pressure without completely torching his paycheck.

Then the 2020 collective bargaining agreement came in and quietly changed the whole vibe. Teams now have to fine most veteran players who miss training camp, and more importantly, they can’t just wipe those fines away later as part of the handshake deal. The number started at $50,000 a day and, under the CBA’s scheduled bump in 2026, it’s now $60,000 a day.

So if you’re Vita Vea and you just decide to stay home? You’re looking at something like $1.2 million gone after 20 days before you even get into preseason game checks or any other financial fallout. And for guys like Bijan Robinson, Jahmyr Gibbs, or Tuli Tuipulotu still on rookie deals, it’s a little “cheaper” at $45,000 a day — but even then, that all adds up.

So yeah, most players just show up. Not because they’re thrilled about it, but because the CBA basically made the “stay away” option way too expensive to justify.

That’s where the hold-in comes in. It’s a different category entirely. Instead of getting hit with automatic fines for not reporting, the player shows up, checks in, does all the team stuff… and just doesn’t fully practice.

The standard contract says players are supposed to fully participate in camp, meetings, and practices. If they don’t, the 2026 max fine for an unexcused missed practice is $16,984. Stack enough of those together and it can escalate into conduct detrimental territory, which opens the door to a full week’s salary being docked or even a suspension without pay.

But here’s the key part: none of that kicks in on its own. The team has to actively label the absence as unexcused, and be able to prove it. And that’s where things get messy. Because how can you prove that someone didn't tweak their back?

And yeah, the timing is obvious. It’s not subtle at all. But it’s also not really meant to be.

The Tactic Works Because Teams Let It Work

A hold-in only works because both sides kind of agree to play along, even if nobody says that out loud. And while it might look like the player is calling all the shots from the sideline, the reality is teams still hold most of the actual leverage. They just usually choose not to use all of it at once.

Teams can just move on in practice reps, give those snaps to someone else, and wait the player out until the regular season pressure starts to build. These guys heading into their fourth year specifically, there’s also a bit of long-term math involved — heading into the final year of their rookie deal, if they mishandle the timing, they can mess with the service time they need to hit free agency in the first place.

But the truth is, most teams don’t really want to go nuclear over this stuff.

It’s not usually worth turning a contract negotiation into a full-blown standoff with a player they’ve already spent years scouting, drafting, and developing as part of their core. You can hear that in how coaches talk about it. Dan Campbell basically shrugged off the idea that Gibbs’ situation was some big crisis and said he expected it to get done anyway. Atlanta’s staff has kept things pretty quiet around Robinson, treating it like business rather than drama.

Then you get situations like Vita Vea, where the line between “injury management” and “contract tension” gets blurry on purpose. He’s 31, in the final year of a four-year, $71 million extension, and set to make a $17 million base salary that isn’t guaranteed. He already held in during mandatory minicamp, asked for a trade when talks stalled, and then showed up to camp anyway. Todd Bowles called it a “tweak,” which conveniently gives everyone a little cover to avoid making it a bigger thing than it already is.

It lets both sides keep things from blowing up. The player doesn’t have to risk getting hurt before he locks in future money, and the team still gets him in the building — around coaches, in meetings, staying connected — so the moment a deal gets done, he can ramp back up quickly.

Because the injury part of this isn’t just theory. We’ve seen how fast things can go sideways. Rashawn Slater held in with the Chargers last summer, got his extension done, and then tore his patellar tendon in practice less than two weeks later. Without that new contract in place, that injury could’ve completely changed his financial future.

Teams know that risk is real, even if they don’t love how players respond to it. And they also know the tactic works. Jamal Adams and T.J. Watt used hold-ins in 2021 and ended up resetting their markets. DK Metcalf did it in 2022 and got a big extension. James Cook sat out practices last summer before landing a $48 million deal from Buffalo. Chris Olave just wrapped his own situation with a massive extension that can reach $132 million.

It’s not a perfect strategy, but it’s effective enough that players keep using it.

Of course, it doesn’t always end in a win. Ja’Marr Chase came back to work in 2024 without a new deal. Roquan Smith eventually ended his hold-in too, only to get traded later that season when Chicago still wouldn’t meet his number. Baltimore stepped in and made him the league’s first $20 million-per-year off-ball linebacker.

Even when it “fails,” though, it usually doesn’t really disappear. It just moves the problem somewhere else.

The NFL May Eventually Try To Close The Door

The current CBA runs through the 2030 season, but let’s be real — we all know the league and the union are going to be back at the table before then. Between the push for an 18-game schedule and the next wave of media money, there’s just too much at stake for things to stay quiet for long.

And when that next round of negotiations does happen, it would honestly be shocking if “hold-ins” don’t come up as one of the owners’ biggest talking points.

From the league’s side, you can already see where this is headed. They’ll probably try to tighten things up — maybe more power to challenge when a player says he’s dealing with some vague injury. But none of that comes for free. Every one of those changes would mean the NFLPA giving up one of the few real pressure points a player has once he’s already under contract. And if they ever do touch it, they’re going to want something real in return — more guarantees, better injury protection, or at least more flexibility baked into deals.

And honestly, the owners should be careful what they wish for here. The hold-in didn’t just appear out of nowhere — it exists because the league basically made the old-school holdout too expensive to survive. If you close this door too, the tension doesn’t just vanish. It shifts. You’ll see more “mysterious” injuries, more public trade requests, more grievance battles, and probably more situations where players are willing to drag things even closer to game day just to get leverage back.

What we’ve got right now is messy, but it’s a controlled kind of messy.

All stats courtesy of NFL Pro.

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