NFLPA player reps balk at endorsing new CBA
Team owners keen to land 10-year deal in bid to maximize television revenues
NFL players union leaders on Friday urged the inverse of what Elvis Presley sang in the late ’60s. Namely, a little more conversation and a little less action.
A little more conversation meaning further negotiations with NFL owners.
The NFL Players Association announced Friday afternoon that the union’s board of player representatives would not, in fact, vote as planned on terms for a new collective bargaining agreement with NFL owners.
More than 75 per cent of owners on Thursday approved those terms, reached this week after 10 months of negotiations between the two sides.
The union’s executive player council plus all 32 player reps had agreed to meet via conference call on Friday afternoon and vote separately on whether to endorse terms for a new 10-year CBA.
The executive player council under executive director Demaurice Smith — namely, president Eric Winston, treasurer Eric Herzlich and VPS Sam Acho, Lorenzo Alexander, Zak Deossie, Thomas Morstead, Russell Okung, Richard Sherman, Michael Thomas, Adam Vinatieri and Benjamin Watson — voted 6-5 on Friday against endorsement.
After three hours of occasionally contentious conference-call conversation (this, according to NFL Network), the player rep vote was tabled. The union afterward announced that, instead, the NFLPA’S executive committee “looks forward to meeting with NFL management again next week before the board (of reps) takes a vote shortly after.”
The NFL did not immediately indicate whether owners are indeed prepared to further discuss matters with union leaders next week, presumably in Indianapolis during the league’s scouting combine.
ESPN’S Dan Graziano reported the league has agreed to meet with the NFLPA on Tuesday at the combine, but he underscored that doesn’t necessarily mean owners are willing to reopen negotiations on CBA terms.
In its statement Thursday night announcing ownership approval of new CBA terms, the NFL stated that unless players quickly approved terms themselves, and because “the clubs and players need to have a system in place and know the rules that they will operate under by next week, (owners) also approved moving forward under the final year of the 2011 CBA if the players decide not to approve the negotiated terms.”
If players should approve, then 17-game regular seasons and expanded playoffs would be right around the corner. Plus a slew of owner concessions to players.
One year remains on the 10-year CBA the league and NFLPA signed in 2011; it is set to expire in 13 months.
Owners want a new CBA in place now so as to maximize revenues from new TV contracts with networks through the 2020s; the promise of no labour disruptions for the next 10 years apparently is that meaningful to those talks.
Until Friday afternoon it had been believed that, by NFLPA procedural rules, at least 22 of 32 player reps (minimum twothirds) had to vote in favour of said terms before rank-and-file members could vote themselves, and ultimately decide for the union whether to approve or disapprove terms of a new CBA.
But such a trigger apparently does not exist. ESPN’S Graziano broke the news earlier Friday afternoon that, as with the NFLPA executive council, the full board of 32 player reps may only recommend to full membership which way to vote and, furthermore, that even if both leadership entities recommend disapproval, the some 2,100 dues-paying players ultimately will decide for the union.
Owners want to expand the regular season for the first time since 1978, from 16 games per team to 17, plus add two more playoff games each January, from 11 to 13.
The playoff-field increase would take effect immediately, for this coming season, but the earliest the 17-game schedule would go into effect would be 2021 or 2022.
Players reportedly are fine with playoff expansion. But hardliner reps such as Sherman, the
Pro Bowl San Francisco 49ers cornerback, steadfastly oppose adding another regular-season game.
Houston Texans star defensive lineman J.J. Watt, who is not a player rep, tweeted his opposition to same on Thursday night.
To assuage such concerns, the league is offering in turn to reduce the pre-season schedule from four games to three. And it is offering a slew of other new concessions, which may or may not be enough to convince a simple majority of dues-paying players to approve the new CBA terms.
A sampling of proposed concessions: an increase in the players’ portion of shareable revenues from 47 to 48.5 per cent (amounting to a $5-billion bump over the 10-year life of the new deal from 2021-30); expanding practice-squad rosters from 10 per team and hiking minimum wages for such players from the 2019 rates of $7,600 per week to $10,500; improving benefits of active and retired players alike; doing away with marijuana-related suspensions; diluting the power of the commissioner in matters of player discipline; allowing teams to dress an additional offensive lineman for games; and making training camps more safe and less physically taxing.
One report said players with existing contracts that would extend into a 17-game season would be paid, under proposed terms, a maximum of $250,000 for that extra game.
It would not be surprising if that were a sticking point with many player reps, most of whom are longtime NFL veterans.
If so, that’d be a relatively easy fix; owners could merely lift that $250,000 cap and allow contracted players to earn an additional per-game rate for any contracted year that spills into the 17-game era.