{"id":482277,"date":"2026-02-21T16:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T16:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/482277\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T16:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T16:57:10","slug":"once-nflpa-has-new-executive-director-nfl-likely-will-move-quickly-on-new-cba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/482277\/","title":{"rendered":"Once NFLPA has new executive director, NFL likely will move quickly on new CBA"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NFL Players Association is keeping very quiet<\/a> regarding its plans to replace former executive director Lloyd Howell. It\u2019s believed that the union will emerge from next month\u2019s annual meetings with a new director.<\/p>\n

Whenever it happens, here\u2019s a safe bet: The NFL will contact the next executive director sooner rather than later regarding the possibility of working out a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.<\/p>\n

The fact that the NFL has waited to pick a date<\/a> for Super Bowl LXII due to the lingering possibility of an eighteenth game adds urgency to the equation. They\u2019ll need to lock in the convention center and the many hotels the league will need for the week in Atlanta. Which will mean picking a date soon. Which will mean knowing whether there will be an extra week in the season soon, too.<\/p>\n

And while the NFLPA said during its pre-Super Bowl press conference that the players have no appetite for an eighteenth game, interim executive director David White acknowledged that \u201cit\u2019s a point of negotiation<\/a>.\u201d Unlike Howell \u2014 who at one point said, \u201cWho doesn\u2019t want more football?\u201d \u2014 White is playing the game in order to get the best deal.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the basic reality, which the league will likely explain to the next executive director (and it could indeed be White) in no uncertain terms. The NFL will get another game, if it wants it. <\/p>\n

Come 2031, the owners will do what they did in 2011. They\u2019ll lock the players out until the players accept the NFL\u2019s non-negotiable terms.<\/p>\n

Eighteen regular-season games per year. Sixteen international games per season. And, possibly, a reconstruction of the salary cap formula that gives the players fixed cap figures each and every year in lieu of a roughly 50-50 revenue split.<\/p>\n

Whoever gets the job will be in the same position that DeMaurice Smith was, both in 2011 and 2020. If the players aren\u2019t prepared to miss regular-season games, the players eventually will accept whatever they have to accept to return to work.<\/p>\n

In 2011, it took an offseason lockout to prove the point. In 2020, Smith tried to get ahead of the inevitable by taking the best deal on a seventeenth before the players experienced the pain of having the league shut down from March until late July.<\/p>\n

This time around, the owners may say to the next executive director that the deal offered in the short term, if not accepted, will get worse over time. \u201cTake it now, it\u2019s this. Take it next year, it\u2019s this minus that. Take it after a lockout, and it\u2019s this minus a lot more than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether the next executive director calls the bluff remains to be seen. Chances are it won\u2019t be a bluff.<\/p>\n

The NFL\u2019s labor-management relationship has a massive imbalance in bargaining power, because one side is willing to resort to the nuclear option and the other is not. Until that changes, the owners have the leverage to dictate terms, tactfully and unmistakably.<\/p>\n

The best evidence of a plan to move quickly comes from the fact that Super Bowl LXII still doesn\u2019t have a date. Until it does, the NFL will be keeping the door open for a new CBA that expands the regular season to 18 games in 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NFL Players Association is keeping very quiet regarding its plans to replace former executive director Lloyd Howell.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-482277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}