NFL owners have put together a proposal they believe will result in a new decade of labor peace, but we’re not there just yet.
All 32 NFL owners met at the Conrad Hotel in New York City on Thursday to vote on the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, which they did in a positive sense. Multiple reports indicate that the owners’ vote was not unanimous, but enough owners were on board to get the job done.
“Following more than ten months of intensive and thorough negotiations, the NFL Players and clubs have jointly developed a comprehensive set of new and revised terms that will transform the future of the game, provide for players – past, present, and future – both on and off the field, and ensure that the NFL’s second century is even better and more exciting for the fans,” the league said in a statement.
“The membership voted today to accept the negotiated terms on the principal elements of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. The Players Association would also need to vote to approve the same terms for there to be a new agreement.
“Since the clubs and players need to have a system in place and know the rules that they will operate under by next week, the membership also approved moving forward under the final year of the 2011 CBA if the players decide not to approve the negotiated terms. Out of respect for the process and our partners at the NFLPA, we will have no further comment at this time.”
The NFLPA’s executive council will have a conference call on Friday to discuss the terms with the player representatives. If two-thirds of the player representatives approve the deal, it then goes to a vote for all NFL players, and a simple majority is all that’s needed to put the new CBA forward in that case.
One of the primary points of contention over the last few years as both sides have looked to keep the labor peace the NFL has enjoyed since the current CBA was ratified in 2011 is the prospect of a 17-game schedule. Some player reps have said that they absolutely do not want a CBA with a 17-game schedule, but the additional money involved in the extra regular-season game may be too much to refuse.
As ESPN’s Adam Schefter points out, NFL players would go from a 47% share of all revenue under the current CBA to a 48% share in the new deal at 16 games, and then to 48.5% share everyone’s in agreement 17 games, which shifts $5 billion of revenue to players’ side.
In addition, both sides are excited about a new CBA because that revenue pool will expand with new television deals that will be struck in the new decade. In giving a higher percentage and a bigger pie to the players, the owners clearly believe they’ve opposition-proofed their proposal.
Here’s one thing that could get in the way: As Tom Pelissero of the NFL Network reports, the owners are proposing that all players who play in all 17 regular-season games but have contracts covering 16 games would be paid extra for the additional game, but that the extra game check would be capped at $250,000. The NFLPA would be likely to balk at anything less than a percentage equivalent to 1/17th of every player’s base salary. Under his current contract, for example, Rams quarterback Jared Goff has a 2020 cash contract value of $31,042,682. Dividing that by 17 would still put Goff in the neighborhood of $1.826 million for an extra game check. Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz has a 2020 cash contract value $39.383 million, and 1/17th of that comes out as $2.317 million — almost 10 times what the league proposes. A cap of $250,000 isn’t going to wash with any of the league’s highest-paid players, nor should it.
While all the wrinkles are not yet known, the expansion of the regular season and adding a seventh playoff team to each conference does add complications to potential player snaps, and thus, an increased potential for injury. The NFLPA would likely want expanded rosters and other considerations to offset this factor.
Per multiple reports, the owners are also offering higher spending floors per team, relaxed offseason rules, updates to the drug and discipline policies, and higher minimum salaries. Now that the owners have taken their steps toward labor peace with a quickness, we’ll see how the players react.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”
