Amid signs of quiet optimism as the financial gap closes between the NFL and the players’ union, the negotiations remain on the edge of one of those TV knives that can cut through a can and then through a steak.
Ravens cornerback Domonique Foxworth, widely believed to be the eventual president of the NFLPA, had some strong words on CNBC regarding the owners’ position on the disclosure of financial information.
“The numbers that they’ve offered us can be extrapolated from the numbers that are printed in Forbes magazine. It’s nothing substantial,” Foxworth told Darren Rovell, via Jamison Hensley of the Baltimore Sun. “The idea that they can ask a billion dollars from us without giving us the opportunity to crawl through their numbers is somewhat disrespectful. Essentially what they’re doing is asking us to buy a car and only allow us to look at the car through the showroom window and not kick the tires and drive it around. It’s really aggravating for us.”
He also called the league’s willingness to offer total profitability numbers along with the number of team that have seen a drop in profits “laughable.”
As a result, plenty of stress has re-entered the process.
“Things haven’t been great,” Foxworth said. “They want to evaluate a billion dollar decision based on two numbers. It’s really hard to say with any certainty that anything positive will happen in the next couple of days.”
The good news is that no news has come out of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in Washington through more than four hours of talks on Thursday, a day before the expiration of the extended labor deal.
In the end, the question becomes whether the union thinks it can do a better deal via litigation than bargaining. Perhaps they can. The challenge for both sides, as explained at the tail end of today’s PFT Live, will be to objectively predict the deal that could be done after the litigation strategy commences, and to try to do that deal now.