There were a lot of good signs to take from the latest round of not-so-secret talks between the NFL and the NFLPA* this week, which were capped off by a Manhattan dinner between Roger Goodell and DeMaurice Smith.
(Let’s hope Goodell didn’t chose to eat at La Familigia.)
An even better sign is that the two sides plan to continue talking. Gary Myers of the New York Daily News writes that there will be “more talks to come next week.”
“This is the first time since the meetings started last year that both sides are motivated at the same time to get a deal done,” Myers writes.
Myers thinks a deal could get done by early-to-mid July.
“Right people, right format, right time,” one source told Myers. “It’s the optimum moment for reasonable people to find reasonable solutions to problems that are not insolvable.”
At times during the lockout the two sides have seemed anything but reasonable. That finally seems to be changing.