When it comes to the NFL and the NFL Players Association, a disparity exists in bargaining power. One side is willing to use the nuclear option of shutting the game down for a full season, and one isn’t.
Still, the fact that the players won’t go without missing a single game check doesn’t mean they should roll over and give the NFL whatever it wants. I say that because it feels like that’s what’s precisely going to happen when it comes to the NFL’s inevitable push to add an eighteenth regular-season game.
Even if the fight ends short of a work stoppage, there should still be a fight.
When DeMaurice Smith served as the NFLPA’s executive director, he initially said there was no chance of an 18-game season. Five years ago, Smith said, “I don’t see an 18-game schedule -- under any circumstance -- being in the best interest of our players.”
Smith’s successor, Lloyd Howell, is singing a much different tune. Before his comments to the Washington Post that confirmed talks on adding another regular-season game have begun, Howell said this to Mike Jones of TheAthletic.com: “It sounds attractive. Who doesn’t want to see more football, myself included? But all these other things have to be worked out.”
In 2010, union management flatly said it could’t sell 18 games to the players. Even if players are willing to play another game now, there’s an element of hard-to-get that the union needs to get going in its overall posturing with the league.
The NFL is ruthless. The NFL is relentless. The NFL will get what it wants.
But here’s the thing. The less the NFL has to fight for something, the more the NFL will try to get.
The union needs to fight. To scratch. To claw. If it doesn’t, the union won’t get nearly what it should or could in returning for the massive concession of adding another regular-season game to the total workload that players endure.
It’s not nearly enough to shrug and says, “There will be more money and we get half of it.” That extra money means a lot to the owners. And while they could force an eighteenth game by locking the players out after the current CBA ends in 2030, they can’t force the players to do it before then.
So, if they want it, the union needs to not be saying, “Who doesn’t want to see more football?” The union needs to be saying, “We don’t want to see more football. And it’s not going to be easy or cheap to change our minds.”
