Today, Pro Football Management’s Howard Shatsky, who’s worked with such notable NFL players as Michael Strahan, Brian Westbrook and Mike McCrary, wraps up his thoughts on how to be forthright with a player when his career prospects are dim.

Telling a young man that it’s time to move on from his football dreams is a very difficult conversation to have.  I do not want to be the person who crushes a young man’s dream of playing in the NFL.  However, I also do not want to be the person who encourages a player to keep trying when there is virtually no chance of success.

One reason why is because, in most cases, the player does not work during this time.  Thus, when he finally realizes his NFL dream is over, he is 4-5 years behind his graduating class in terms of work experience.  So, what can that player put on a resume?  A prospective employer is not impressed by a resume with no work experience. An interview where the former player tells a potential employer that he has not worked for the last few years because he was training to play in the NFL does not usually go well.  Thus, by avoiding this talk, I feel the agent is doing his client a disservice.

I recently had to have this difficult conversation with one of my players.  I told him I had done everything I could to try and get him an NFL opportunity, but after almost two years of trying, I felt an obligation to be honest with him and tell him I did not think I would be able to get him that NFL opportunity that he so desperately wants.  This conversation was particularly difficult because I feel the player does have the ability to play in the NFL.

I told him that if he felt another agent could get him a chance, I would terminate the Standard Representation Agreement (SRA) between us and that he would be free to sign with another agent.  I also told him that if he did want to keep trying, I would stick by him and continue to do my best.  I suggested he try playing in the CFL, getting some great game film and then trying to come back and play in the NFL.  It does happen: Dolphins DE Cameron Wake is a prime example of this, and became one of the NFL’s best defensive lineman after a short stay north of the border.  But again, Wake is the exception.

The conversation took place while I was having lunch with my wife.  After we hung up, I turned to her and said, ‘you realize I feel like I just ruined that kid’s life and crushed his dream.’  However, is that really what I did? Or did I help my client by encouraging him to write his resume and get a job?

I recall Bill Parcells telling a client of mine that if the day ever came when he was tired of getting hit in the head on a daily basis, that there was no shame in moving on.  I believe Bill was correct.  In this case, the player is an extremely intelligent person, and as I told him, I felt he could be successful with or without the NFL, and that the NFL was not the end all and be all.  As an intelligent young man, I told him I felt he could be very successful in the business world, and that if he did take my advice, I would do whatever I could to help him get his first job outside of football.  As of now, I do not know what the player’s decision will be.

What I do know is that by being honest with my client, I had fulfilled the promise I make to every player or coach I represent: that I will never lie to them and always look out for their best interests.  The final decision is always the players.  Will he decide to take my advice and ‘hang up his cleats?’  That remains to be seen.  However, I can sleep well at night knowing that although it was extremely difficult, I did what I had promised: I gave him the best advice I could.

I asked longtime NFLPA contract advisor Howard Shatsky of Professional Football Management to provide me with his thoughts on how, and when, to tell a player it’s time to ‘pursue his life’s work,’ as legendary Steelers coach Chuck Noll used to tell players he’d cut.

Howard made some excellent points. His thoughts are below:

What’s the best way to handle a player who is projected as a late-round pick or an undrafted free agent?  When is too long when it comes to pursuing NFL dreams?

Obviously, many of these players are released before even making an NFL roster, or after a season on the practice squad, or at best a year or two on the 53-man roster.  So what’s an agent’s obligation regarding a young man’s non-football future? During my 27 years as an agent, I have had to have this conversation with many players.

Some agents choose the easy way out.  They just stop taking the player’s phone calls until they are fired and no longer have to deal with that client.  Others will tell the player to keep working hard, that an opportunity is coming. The reality is that if one of these “bottom of the roster” players is released and is not picked up for an entire year, he has very little chance of getting back in the league.

This is not to say it does not happen.  I recently represented a player from a small school who went undrafted and sat out the entire year.  However while sitting out, he had a job and would work out before and after going to work.  Most players do not work during this time, even though it is physically impossible to train for eight hours a day.  When asked what they are up to, they often say they are “training to get back in the NFL.”  To me, that is a synonym for unemployed.  There is no reason a player cannot work while attempting to get back in the league.

Ultimately my client’s hard work paid off.  He performed so well at the Regional Combine that 14 NFL teams expressed interest in him.  He ultimately signed with a team and was released, then picked up by another NFL club and spent the entire season on their practice roster.  The next season he finally made the 53-man roster and will now enter 2016 with one season toward his pension and free agency.  But looking at things realistically, if he makes the 53 for the next few seasons, by the time he is an unrestricted free agent — which is when the majority of NFL players “cash in” — he will be 29, so he is playing in hopes of getting that one big contract.

But again, this is the exception, not the rule.  Most players who sit out an entire NFL season have very little chance of making it back to the NFL.  This is not always because they do not have the ability to play at the NFL level. It’s just that the reality of the business is that most NFL teams would rather take a chance on a player coming out of college than one who has been “on the street” for a year.  That is extremely frustrating to both the agent and his client.  Some players who have been in training camps feel they have the ability to play in the NFL and in some cases they are correct.  Many times I have had a client tell me, “just get me an opportunity and I know I will get it done.”  The problem is that often, even though an agent may spend hours calling NFL teams and even trying to call in favors, he is unable to get another opportunity for the player.  It is at that point I feel an agent has an obligation to speak with his player and tell him it is time to move on.

More from Howard on Friday, including a recent experience with a client in just this situation.

Today, Howard Shatsky, a longtime agent who’s pretty active on Twitter (and worth a follow) tweeted this. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a scout last week at Rice’s pro day.

We’ve always had a friendly relationship, so we talk when we bump into each other on the road. He was lamenting the emails he gets from agents this time of year, pitching him on obscure players that are long shots at best. He contrasted that with a recent experience with one of the biggest agents in the game, who’s representing a top pick this spring. It was a great illustration of the dilemma hundreds of agents are going to have over the next 30-60 days.

The hard part about this business is that there are so many players that get signed by, at times, desperate agents who just want to get someone on SRA. The agents, in turn, spend weeks promoting these players to scouts. Slowly, they come to the realization that their clients are not getting traction. Usually, that’s around the end of March, i.e., now. After all, teams should be expressing interest in the player, not vice versa. Anyway, at this point, these agents have one of two reactions.

One is that they hope against hope that, somehow, their clients are super-sleepers despite the lack of attention. This is mostly denial. The other is that they realize that the time and money they’ve spent on their clients will not be rewarded, barring a miracle. When they come to this realization, deep down, they know they need to have the conversation that Howard is referring to.

The question is, how do you do this? How do you crush a kid’s dreams? How do you cut your losses when you’ve poured so many resources into a player?

There’s another element that makes it harder. Every year, it seems, there’s another form of minor-league football that comes along and tries to make a go of it. All of them ultimately fail, but for as long as they hang around, they give players the idea that there’s a post-college level that can vault them into the NFL. In very rare cases, this does happen, but in the vast majority of cases, there’s no ‘AAAA’ level of football.

If you leave college and aren’t on a roster in May, the NFL pretty much turns the page. There are exceptions, like in everything else in life, but not many. So if you’re and agent and you’re honest with yourself, and you’re honest with your client, you have to have that conversation.

More on this topic later this week.