Peter King's Football Morning in America column covers the NFLPA CBA vote, Tom Brady, Austin Ekeler, new Chiefs video, Joe Burrow and more.
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FMIA: Monumental Player Vote Set to Determine Next Decade of the NFL
Something profound for football’s future will happen this week. The league’s 2,500 players (anyone who had a contract with any team for any part of the 2019 season is eligible to vote) will decide whether a controversial Collective Bargaining Agreement between the players and owners will pass muster.
• If it’s approved, the league will have labor peace through the end of the 2030 season, giving the NFL 43 consecutive seasons of football without a regular-season or playoff game being lost.
• If it fails, a period of rancor will settle over the game. The league will play the 2020 season under more restrictive work rules; about $300 million in pension improvements for retired players will be lost; the league’s 60-percent minimum-salary players would lose around $90,000 apiece in the 2020 season; and the uncertain American economy and impact of the coronavirus could make negotiations in 2021 more difficult.
Those two bullet points sum up the CliffsNotes on the state of the CBA. Trust me: The player vote ending Thursday at midnight—a simple majority vote will determine the outcome of the CBA—is a monumental referendum for the next decade of the NFL.
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I won’t take up the majority of this column with labor stuff, because I know you don’t read this column to learn about jousting between millionaires and billionaires. But I thought the final hours of the NFL Players Association president Eric Winston’s six-year run as president should be noted. Some immense pressure and criticism trail him as he walks out the door.
“What’s your gut feeling about this vote?” I asked Winston over the weekend, as he prepared for his last union meeting as president. “Pass or fail?”
“What’s your gut feeling about this vote?” I asked Winston over the weekend, as he prepared for his last union meeting as president. “Pass or fail?”
“I’ve gotten that question a few times,” Winston said from a hotel lobby in Miami, site of the annual NFLPA meetings. “I would think it would pass. I would think it would pass by a lot. It’s important that we let the process play out, and important that all players understand the issues and vote their conscience.”
If the vote fails, Winston said, “We know we’ll be approaching some tense times.”
About 150 players are scheduled to attend the three-day meeting that began Sunday. Voting for a new president—Carolina tackle
Russell Okung is the only announced candidate—is planned for Tuesday.
Winston sounded calm when we spoke, but I’ve heard about the toll this has taken on him, particularly from those who think he and union executive director De Smith rushed a bad deal. “There’s people,” Winston said, “I call ‘em Twitter lawyers, who think somehow this deal was put together quickly. These have been some pretty long and painstaking negotiations. One thing this has not been is rushed. De went to every team during the fall, let ‘em know exactly where we were. We spent 20 hours since the season ended with our player reps. There have been some misconceptions about the process. You’re not going to get everything you want in a negotiation, and we certainly didn’t.”
The biggest problem for the deal herded by Smith and Winston is the 17-game schedule. Packers player rep
Aaron Rodgers told ESPN Radio in Wisconsin last week he wondered “how the hell that even got into the conversation because nobody wanted it.” Winston said he respected Rodgers, who he said had been “very thoughtful” during and after the negotiations. But, Winston said, “I have not heard that from a lot of other guys . . . We made a very aggressive offer early on. We wanted a lot, and the other side [owners] said, ‘You want a lot of this stuff, and this is what we want.’ ”
Seventeen games.
“It wasn’t our idea,” Winston said, “but the other side has a say too. And we got a lot out of it—a higher AR [all revenue, the figure both sides are using for the total increase in dollars in this deal], higher minimum [salaries], expanded rosters, four more practice squad players per team, better work conditions in training camp, better health care, better benefits, a major increase in pension for thousands of former players.”
Somehow, in the zillions of tweets and stories done on this CBA, there has been very little said about the biggest accomplishment of the deal for the union. (Some journalism school should do a study of whether Twitter and some high-profile anti-CBA tweets impacted the vote. As Smith told Mike Florio last week: “Only a fool would say it does not.”) Some 11,000 former players from bygone eras will have their pensions increased by about 53 percent (from $30,000 annually to $46,000), while approximately 700 players who played just three seasons will get pensions for the first time, and about 4,500 will get $50,000 health-savings-reimbursement accounts. “That is something I’m really proud of,” Winston said. “Our leadership said, ‘We can’t leave these guys behind.’ I don’t know why it has been covered the way it has—maybe it’s not high on the list for current players—but I know it was important for our leadership.”
If the proposed CBA is voted down, those pension and retirement improvements for nearly 12,000 ex-players go on hold. And if there’s a bitter fight next offseason, and if the economy and TV picture isn’t rosy, and if owners figure
You guys had your chance at a great deal, a perk like sweetening the pot for the ex-player who’s been retired for 45 years could be the first thing to go. No one knows. But lockouts and strikes get ugly, and the union will have to be most concerned with today’s player, not yesterday’s.
Winston got a little nostalgic over the phone. “There’s some of that,” he said.
“It’s bittersweet to be going, a little. But I pass the baton, and I’m proud to pass it.”
He saved his best line for last. He knows if this deal fails, there could be a job action sometime in 2021 by hard-line players. Players haven’t had the gumption to walk off the job since September 1987, and even then, solidarity lasted only two weeks before stars like Lawrence Taylor began trickling back to work, unwilling to sacrifice their big salaries. Imagine asking
Jimmy Garoppolo to give up his $24.1-million salary in 2021. Or saying to
Aaron Donald, “Sacrifice that $19.9 million for the cause.” They’re in their prime earning years, and one year of that prime might be spent not earning anything. Of course I doubt it comes to that, but NFL players collectively have never had the fortitude to risk a year of income for the greater good—in this case, say, for 51 percent of the gross instead of the likely 48.5 percent this deal will provide.
“It’s one thing to get into a work stoppage,” Winston said. “It’s another thing to win one.”
Clip and save that one.
