Here’s another tidbit from the summary of agreed points that the players discussed Wednesday. The summary was obtained by Howard Balzer (@HBalzer721 on Twitter) of the Sports Xchange and 101sports.com, and forwarded to us.
This specific point was raised with us earlier in the hour by a source who agreed with Friday’s reduced-contact source, who said after the Atlanta labor seminar, “The only thing the players didn’t get is someone else to play for them.”
The parties have agreed that, during the 17-week regular season, teams will conduct only 14 practices in pads.
Let’s repeat that. During the 17-week regular season, teams will have a maximum of only 14 padded practices.
More specifically, teams can have 11 padded practices during the first 11 weeks of the season, with two padded practices permitted in a given week only once. Then, for the final six weeks of the season, a total of three padded practices may be conducted.
Also, teams will be permitted to have one practice in pads per week during the postseason.
This portion of the summary regarding in-season practices contains one more open issue we didn’t previously noticed. The players wants five straight days off during the bye week; it’s not known whether the league included that provision in the labor deal that was approved Thursday.