I never agree with draft picks being taken away as penalty, and never will. It's completely arbitrary and makes every ruling debatable. From a basic level, taking a 5th rounder is totally arbitrary as a penalty since we have no idea where they finish in the standings.
To spell that out more, let's say the extra week of training helped the team win an extra game in the standings. That means the penalty is actually worth less given where in the draft order the now fall to. So you are punishing a team with a loss of resources that their rule breaking made less significant. It doesn't make any sense having a resource taken away in advance when you have no idea how to measure that resources value.
Take away training time next year, fine them real dollars, but leave the draft picks alone. It would be smarter to limit their cap space then their picks, since at least we know the value of a dollar in a year. Even that would need to have much clearer guidelines than what currently exists.
Every time I hear about a ruling like this, I get furious at the league, and am siding with the teams almost every time. Good work Rog. You have now made teams that break rules empathetic and makes me question your judgement again.
