What's it like to hope another man gets injured?

I know because I experienced it firsthand in 2005, and with training camps opening across the NFL, there's a new crop of players about to experience that same feeling. It is morbid but absolutely true; the more guys get hurt, the better. The sooner the better, too.

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The list of players in that situation right now is actually pretty impressive.

Pass-rusher John Abraham had 10 sacks, seven passes defensed and six forced fumbles last year. Wide receiver Brandon Lloyd might not have met expectations in New England last season, but he still caught 74 balls for 911 yards. Right guard Brandon Moore and right tackle Eric Winston, both still on the open market, could form a right side of the offensive line that is probably better than half the teams in the league.

So why are these guys still available? Because they want to be. Kind of.

You see, every one of those four has had multiple contract offers come their way, but the money hasn't been substantial enough to sign. For one thing, those kind of minimum salary deals will always be there, so why go to training camp and wear down your body the next couple of weeks when you don't have to?

More importantly, those guys are the premier players still available at their respective positions. As such, they realize their leverage could increase dramatically should a starter go down at their spot. Hence, the waiting and hoping somebody gets hurt.

"I really try not to think of it that way because I've had a serious knee injury myself," Winston told me recently on the Ross Tucker Football Podcast, adding "but if a guy goes down, yeah, that bodes well for me."

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It worked for Dwight Freeney. The former Indianapolis Colts defensive end languished on the free agent market for more than two months until second-year Chargers pass rusher Melvin Ingram tore his ACL during San Diego's May OTA practice sessions. Their offer to Freeney went up significantly. That's not a coincidence.

Point is, when players get hurt in the NFL, other guys benefit. In 2005, after the Buffalo Bills cut me as a result of a series of injuries (and some other players benefited from that, by the way), I was out of the league for several weeks. Every Sunday night and Monday morning, I'd scour the Internet to see which interior linemen around the NFL got hurt. In my mind, the more the merrier. I wasn't hoping that guys suffered serious injuries, just severe enough that they needed to sign somebody.

If that sounds bad, I'm sorry that I'm not sorry, because that was my reality in terms of providing a living for my family in the zero-sum game that is the National Football League.

For a number of NFL free agents out there right now, the start of NFL training camps around the league puts them in that exact situation.

Ross Tucker is a 2001 Princeton graduate who played seven years in the National Football League for five different teams before retiring in 2008. He wrote previously for Sports Illustrated, ESPN, and Sports USA before joining The Sporting News in July 2013.