Jul iii, 2019

  • Dan GrazianoESPN Staff Writer

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    • Joined ESPN in 2011
    • New Jersey native and author of ii published novels

The important affair to know about the electric current state of collective bargaining talks between the NFL and its players marriage is that the sides are, in fact, talking. This is a big deal because if y'all go back ten years to the tail finish of the previous CBA, they weren't. The owners had decided to opt out of the bargain and lock out the players later on 2010 in an effort to swing the revenue split dorsum in their favor. They did just that.

This time around, with two full seasons left to play earlier the CBA ends, the two sides take already begun talking and are scheduled to ramp upward talks this summer. There's fifty-fifty some motivation to become the new bargain done before the 2019 season starts, which would head off any chance of an ugly work stoppage and permit the league to lean hard into its "NFL 100" marketing campaign and renegotiate its TV deals in peace.

That all sounds great, simply it'due south not likely to be that simple, right? This is a complex negotiation with pitfalls, impasses and points of agreement, the specifics of which no one can foresee from this side of it. Collective bargaining, for the vast majority of you who've had no direct experience with it, is non a cut-and-stale series of issue-for-issue concessions. To some extent, everything has a cost. And if you lot're, say, the NFLPA, and a couple of months from now you find out that 1 of the owners' master priorities is a thing you didn't expect, that might alter your listen about a affair on which you didn't wait to compromise. It would be a mistake to enter a negotiation such as this with a single brand-or-intermission upshot in mind, and the experienced negotiators involved hither understand that.

With all of that in listen and with total cognition that in that location'southward a long mode to become on this and we don't know on which issues the major compromises will eventually be made, let'southward look at some of the main issues effectually which these CBA talks could circumduct. Recollect of information technology as a handy guide for following the talks to come. It would exist our pleasure if you'd keep it bookmarked and refer to it as necessary over the coming months.

The 2 macro categories into which these issues fall are pretty elementary: economical and non-economical. They've been dealt with separately in talks so far -- both in talks betwixt players and owners and in talks between staffers for both sides. The NFLPA has asserted publicly that it isn't interested in conceding on economical bug, and so that'due south worth remembering equally we begin with the economical ones.

Spring to a department:
Revenue split | Stadium credits
Franchise tag and fifth-yr pick
18-game season | Lifetime health care
Drug policy | Commissioner'due south power
Player safety | Former player benefits

The revenue dissever

The current CBA provides that the players' share of revenue average at least 47% of all league revenue over the 10-year life of the bargain. It is here that the NFLPA takes some of its most significant criticism over the 2011 bargain because the main top-line success of the owners' lockout strategy was to reduce the players' share from where it was in the 2006 deal. In that deal, players got 60% of league acquirement, but the NFLPA would point out that this is non an apples-to-apples comparison because under the previous agreement, the players got a share of net revenue (significant after the owners took coin off the top), while the electric current one grants the players a share of the gross revenue and gives the players more say in how much the owners accept off the acme, when and for what purpose.

Regardless, yous can wait the players' side to push for an increase in the players' share of gross revenue in the adjacent deal. This is as simple a principle as yous're likely to encounter in the coverage of the negotiations. The players would like to get more of the money the league generates, and the owners would like to go along it the way it is.

The takeaway: Odds are there will be some (or several) fiscal concessions made on one side or the other that affect the concluding resolution here, and i of the biggest from the owners' side is the one we'll deal with in the next section.

Stadium credits

Historically, the CBA has provided NFL owners the ability to have coin off the top of the acquirement pile, before splitting it with players, to employ for new stadium construction or stadium renovations. The owners finer ran out of that money during the beginning half of the current bargain; at this point, they would be unable to take out more stadium credits without pushing the players' share of gross revenue under 47%, which isn't immune. This is seen by many connected with the talks every bit the main reason the owners are interested in doing a new deal every bit soon as possible -- they need money to assist with stadium projects in places such every bit Buffalo, Cleveland, Jacksonville, Carolina, Washington and even Los Angeles, where Rams owner Stan Kroenke would likely enjoy a bit of league-sponsored assist with his project.

If stadium credits are, indeed, the owners' primary motivation for doing a deal soon, and then they are the fulcrum for nearly, if not all, of the economic issues in this eventual agreement. The NFLPA volition be open to the thought of fresh stadium credits, just it will as well want to institute a price for them. Only to throw out some random numbers: If, for example, the owners upped the players' acquirement share to 53% but were allowed to employ as much as 3% for stadium credits, that would go the players' minimum revenue share upwardly to 50% and likely would be a palatable deal for them.

Apart from the raw numbers, it'll exist important to recall that the players probably won't want to give back on some of the controls the 2011 deal established on the owners' power to take out money for stadium costs. The current stadium credit rules crave the owners to earmark the money for specific uses and prove a minimum return on the investment. Union executive managing director DeMaurice Smith suggested in an interview with ESPN last summertime that the players could seek, if the owners want to take stadium costs out of the players' terminate, to have a say in where and how those stadiums are built. That might be far-fetched, simply it goes to testify how the players feel most the stadium credit upshot: They know it's of import to the owners and retrieve it's ground on which they might exist able to secure other financial concessions.

The takeaway: The extent to which the owners are willing to concede on other issues volition tell you how important the stadium credit issue is to them. The feeling is that it'south paramount. The players likely will hold to a new round of stadium credits, but in return, they should exist able to make gains on other issues such every bit those outlined below.

The franchise tag, fifth-year option and fully funded rule

The surprisingly usually held notion that the players could somehow secure fully guaranteed contracts as a condition of the next CBA is rooted in fantasy. Nothing in the NFL'south CBA prohibits fully guaranteed deals, just as nothing in the CBAs for the NBA or MLB requires them. Fully guaranteed deals became the accustomed norm in those sports considering, over time, players and agents insisted that they would non sign without them.

To this signal, the only veteran NFL player who has secured a fully guaranteed deal is Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins. Quarterbacks such as Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson, who have negotiated extensions since, accept declined to button the issue far plenty to secure full guarantees, and until such players do, it'southward difficult to imagine NFL deals looking anything like those in the NBA or MLB anytime soon.

That said, the NFLPA this offseason has sought and received feedback from players and agents on possible changes to the game'due south economic structure that could assistance them negotiate more favorable deals. The salary cap itself is the biggest restriction on histrion earning power, but the players don't believe the owners volition consider a conversation about eliminating that, so the attention turns to other salary-restricting mechanisms such as the franchise tag, the fifth-year option on offset-round rookie contracts and the league's antiquated "fully funded dominion."

Of those three, the fully funded rule is probably the one the players would take the best run a risk to completely eliminate considering in that location's no modern reason for it to exist. The dominion requires teams to concur in escrow whatsoever portion of a player's contract that is fully guaranteed. For instance, when Cousins signed a three-year, $84 million contract that paid him $25.v million in the beginning year, the Vikings had to deposit the remaining $58.5 million into an account to ensure that they'd be able to pay the guarantees.

This dominion is used by teams as a common excuse when they tell agents that they can't guarantee more money, simply information technology'southward ridiculous. Information technology'south a holdover from four or five decades agone, when the league wasn't every bit financially healthy as it is now and there was a legitimate chance that teams might not be able to make their payrolls. Obviously, with league revenues hovering in the $fifteen billion-per-yr range and teams beingness sold for more than $ii billion, this is no longer a concern, and as a effect, players and agents would like to run across the dominion (and, therefore, the excuse) abolished.

The owners like the franchise tag, which allows each of them to hold ane role player per yr off the free-amanuensis market, and aren't interested in making information technology become away. But the union could seek alterations to the fashion the tag is applied, the cost of applying it and other means of discouraging teams from leaning on information technology.

Aforementioned with the fifth-year option, which allows teams to keep their showtime-round picks off the market (and filibuster the employ of the franchise tag on them) for a yr after their four-year rookie deals expire. Rookie bounty was a major priority for the owners 10 years ago, and equally a outcome, the CBA includes a rookie wage scale that limits salaries at the top of the draft and the fifth-twelvemonth option system that further delays the major payday for first-round picks. If yous're looking for places where the players might seek fiscal concessions from the owners in exchange for something such as stadium credits, this is where they might find some solutions.

The takeaway: The best way to combat the tyranny of the franchise tag would be to go the owners to agree to shorten the length of rookie contracts and allow players to hit costless agency sooner. (Patrick Mahomes wouldn't heed beingness franchised this year or next, for example, but in Yr 6?) I don't think that will happen, but it wouldn't surprise me to see the fully funded rule abolished, the franchise tag position designations contradistinct and the price of using it -- especially more than once -- to increase.

An 18-game regular season

This seems like it was legislated (and discarded) years ago, but sources say it has indeed come up in some of the early discussions this time around.

Some owners remain in favor of expanding the season from 16 games to 18, eliminating two preseason games in the process. At this point, the issue remains a nonstarter for the players, whose research tells them that an 18-game flavour would reduce the average career length from 3.4 years to 2.8 (no modest driblet-off, given that 3 years is the betoken at which players become vested in post-career pension and benefits plans) and would add together only about $10 meg in revenue per squad per season.

But we add this hither as an case of a fringe event that could, conceivably, come into play if something unforeseen were to change. In that location's a price for everything, correct? If the owners wanted an 18-game flavor badly enough to offer players, say, 70% of the acquirement pot, the players would have to listen. But it's extremely unlikely that the sides detect mutual footing on this issue.

The takeaway: No risk this happens.

Lifetime health care for players and their families

This is a perfect example of an result that seems easier than information technology is. The concept of lifetime health care is ane that every player would support in theory, and some take already been vocal nigh their support. But in that location are a couple of problems that make information technology an unlikely goal.

Offset of all, a lifetime wellness care policy would non cover workplace injuries, which would be the chief reason a one-time NFL player would need health care. If you need a knee replacement at age 45 for an injury you lot suffered playing football game when you were 30, that'due south going to require a successful workers' compensation merits.

The NFLPA routinely encourages players to file workers' comp claims on any injury they suffer, pocket-sized or major. Simply many players don't file, in part considering of fearfulness that the team (every bit many employers practise, across many industries) would contest it. Every NFL team gets a salary-cap credit out of the overall revenue puddle to cover its workers' comp insurance, but the problem is every squad gets the aforementioned amount, despite the fact that the laws governing workers' comp claims differ from land to state.

While the credits the teams get ostensibly make information technology easier for players to collect on these claims, in exercise information technology doesn't work that way. Let's simplify and say, for example, that the Browns and Bengals pay $i million a year in workers' comp insurance because the workers' comp laws in Ohio are more favorable to employers, but the 49ers, Raiders, Chargers and Rams pay $4 million a year in workers' comp insurance considering the laws in California are more favorable to workers. This means the credit, which is a flat number, doesn't aid the California teams equally much equally it helps the Ohio teams, making the California teams more likely to contest a merits.

During the 2011 CBA negotiations, the NFLPA proposed a new organization that would classify the workers' comp credits proportionally, instead of every bit a flat rate, which means the teams with higher insurance costs would go more than than the teams with lower insurance costs. But the measure failed because (surprise!) the teams in states with lower insurance costs wouldn't approve it. And so things got actually ugly, as teams in California, Louisiana and other places lobbied legislatures to pass laws that would make it difficult for pro athletes to qualify for workers' comp. You lot might remember Drew Brees lending his name to the opposition to such a law in Louisiana.

Even if players could secure "lifetime health care" for themselves and their dependents, that wouldn't solve their biggest trouble, which is care for health issues resulting from workplace injuries. What the union tells its members at this point is that the Affordable Care Human activity has made it far easier for people with preexisting atmospheric condition to obtain wellness care, so it pushes onetime players toward the ACA every bit a solution to this problem.

As for not-injury lifetime health intendance, the NFLPA says information technology did the research into the potential cost and found it prohibitive. One NFLPA source said the spousal relationship went to "four or five" different major health care providers, and only ane of them was willing to do the actuarial work and offer an estimate. The estimated cost of lifetime health treat players and their families was between $1.v billion and $2 billion per year. Carving that corporeality out of the players' share of revenue under the current CBA, the union estimates that the players' share would finer driblet from its level of about 47% to about 43%. That's a heavy price at a fourth dimension when the players are interesting in increasing their proportional share of league revenues.

Would it exist worth information technology? Probably non. If the marriage's research into former players is accurate, the majority of old NFL players volition finish upwardly finding another task and getting health care through that. The current CBA offers players and their families five years of mail-career health care designed as a bridge to that theoretical next job, and the NFLPA says it encourages those who don't find mail service-career employment to sign up for health care nether the ACA.

The upshot on lifetime health care as a CBA consequence is that information technology sounds nifty, but when push button comes to shove, it might non finish up being worth the cost.

The takeaway: It doesn't audio like the NFLPA thinks this is a place it needs to push. Don't expect this to happen.

The drug policy

This is one of the non-economic problems on which there should be some optimism for significant change. The recent joint proclamation by the NFL and NFLPA virtually new mental wellness programs indicate that the two sides are working together on issues regarding players' long-term health and well-being, and potential changes to the drug policy could keep to demonstrate that.

Take, for example, marijuana. There seems to exist strong feeling on both sides that the electric current punishments on the CBA books for marijuana violations are farthermost and outdated, and some on the owners' side have even suggested eliminating marijuana testing altogether. The two sides are exploring the all-time way to address this outcome, including adopting something like the NHL model, which tests players for marijuana merely does not punish them for using it. The thought there would be to employ the marijuana testing as a diagnostic tool to identify players who might be using the drug to mask an injury or deal with some off-field issue with which they could use more help (maybe under the new mental health initiatives).

play

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Foxworth: Marijuana testing won't exist a large issue in new CBA

Domonique Foxworth and Dan Orlovsky discuss the impact the new NFL CBA will accept on younger players and the league'southward policy on marijuana.

Again, information technology'southward important to remember that information technology'due south unlikely that the players would have an owner concession on a non-economical result such as marijuana in exchange for a financial concession. Simply role of these talks will involve improvements to the league's drug policy, and information technology appears that both sides are willing to discuss ways to make information technology improve.

The takeaway: Wait the penalty for marijuana use to be significantly smaller, if not completely eliminated, under the new deal.

Commissioner'due south discipline ability

There have been complaints from players for years over the fact that commissioner Roger Goodell has complete control over player discipline, and those complaints have grown more intense since the league established the personal conduct policy in 2014 without a collective-bargaining negotiation with the marriage. It'southward unlikely that the players can go the league to scrap that personal conduct policy and supersede information technology with a collectively bargained 1 as part of this agreement, only some people close to the talks believe that Goodell is at least willing to engage in a discussion with the union about neutral arbitration for discipline matters. Over again, everything has a price, and if the NFLPA is willing to concede something on an issue of importance to the owners, it's possible that this agreement could see a modify to the fashion subject field is administered.

The takeaway: Historically, the union hasn't made this a high-priority item because a very small pct of players run across discipline issues at some indicate in their careers, and the union would rather fight on problems that touch all players. Only because of the high profile of some of these cases -- and the belief among players that if Tom Brady could go burned by this system, anyone tin can -- it'due south an issue on which I wait the NFLPA to seek a change. I also remember they can become i -- again, depending on the cost in terms of concessions. I never understood why Goodell wanted to practise that part of the job anyway, and I wouldn't arraign him if he were tired of it.

Player health and prophylactic

The players' big victory in the about contempo CBA was securing a reduction in offseason work requirements, significantly reducing the amount of time they are required to be at the squad facility. This has become a bone of contention with coaches and fans who mutter about players exercising their rights to stay away when they don't have to be in that location, and owners accept heard those complaints from their coaches.

Information technology'due south certainly possible that owners could seek, on behalf of their coaches, to roll back some of the gains the players fabricated on this outcome the terminal fourth dimension. But because the fiscal significance of some of the other problems, it's hard to imagine them fighting that hard for it. It'due south even harder to imagine the players giving dorsum on the gains they made in this area. Some have floated the idea of relaxing rules that limit contact between coaches and first-yr players, and it'south possible you lot could see some tweaks such as that, merely there aren't likely to exist major rollbacks of offseason rules.

Otherwise, the NFLPA will proceed to press on issues that it has been pressing on during the agreement, such equally the concussion protocol, holding teams accountable for violating the aforementioned offseason piece of work rules and upholding standards on issues such every bit field conditions, which came into play this past flavor when the planned United mexican states Metropolis game between the Chiefs and the Rams had to exist moved to Los Angeles.

The takeaway: Don't be surprised if the NFLPA pushes for -- and gets -- specific punishments established for teams that violate the concussion protocol and offseason workout rules. These issues have been amended via joint agreement during the life of the current deal, and they could end up being legislated officially in this 1.

Former player benefits

This is another expanse in which the NFLPA claims some degree of victory in the 2011 negotiations, as the CBA established a "Legacy Fund" to which squad owners brand contributions. The fund benefits more than 4,700 quondam players who were vested in the league's pension program prior to 1993.

Sources on the NFLPA end of the talks say they expect to try to build on that and push button for further improvements to quondam player benefits in the side by side bargain.

The takeaway: If the owners were willing to contribute here last time, there's no reason they won't be again. This is an issue on which both sides tin come out looking good.