Wow, that is a strong dude.
Wow, that is a strong dude.
I love everything NFL, though I guess I should clarify that with almost everything, since when the combine and the pre-draft speculation happens, I completely space out and ignore everything until the draft magazines come out, then I get one, read it, and am done. It's hard for me to get excited about this.
For those of you who do -- are you more invested because you follow college football as well, so you already know all these names?
I follow both college football and the NFL so it's fun for me to see what guys have good/great objective "measureables" and which ones don't. Measureables don't mean everything and sometimes can fool you into thinking a player is better or worse than he really is.
Taking a step back from Paea's ridiculous bench press display, while I admire crazy strength like that, that bench press alone doesn't mean he will be a good player or heck even make an NFL team. It's a super gaudy number but there is just a lot more to playing tackle in collge or the NFL than having brute strength like that.
He did 15 more reps than Suh did at the combine last year at the same position. Is he that much better? No. Although cynics might say if he was on a little bit better team that didn't play a lot of its game when all the east coast writers were in bed he would have had more press.
No. I mean, I like college football, too, but I don't follow every team or anything, so I rarely know all these names until I start learning them for the draft. I like to see the prospects, and who my team might get. I like the speculate and know a lot about them and pull for my team to get certain guys. So I read up on them and follow the Combine and workouts and such.Originally Posted by Matt Bowyer
As for Paea, the short arms that helped him do this will actually be a liability in the game itself.
While I'm not all that worried about the NFL labor situation at this point, there was some potentially very big news on Tuesday. So the NFL owners included language in the current TV deal that said that the networks would pay even if there were no games played due to a labor impasse. They would have had to pay it back, so to speak, down the road, but what it did was put the owners in a pretty strong position. Today a judge said they can't get that money.
While it would be nice if the two sides could come to an agreement so that the offseason will not be disrupted much, the reality is that for most fans there would be no impact until later in the summer. Free agency and trades would be delayed, but we are still going to have a draft. I'm not going to be all that concerned unless there is still no deal heading into mid-July.
Given that ruling, I think there will be a deal sooner than later, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if they issued an extension to the deadline.
That ruling certainly boosts the players position. Some teams are going to start screaming if they suddenly have no revenue to use to meet their debt obligations.
There's no way to extend it. It isn't an artificial deadline.
The NFL fiscal year ends on Thursday. At midnight, the collective bargaining agreement the NFLPA has abided by expires. If the players don't have an agreement, the owners have no real choice but to lock them out; not doing so creates a myriad of problems for them.
That's plain not true. They can mutually agree to extend the existing contract, something every sports media has been reporting for at least a month. That would create a new deadline.
From what I've read, the owners can simply choose not to do anything and as with other labor situations the default is that the current system continues. That allows players to continue to rehab and so on while negotiations continue. It doesn't require anything special. The whole point of the lock-out talk was that the owners would be taking a hard stand in an attempt to try and force players to accept the changes they want.
So the Packers cut AJ Hawk today, and now apparently are going to resign him tomorrow. Supposedly they cut him in order to get out of $10m and apparently he's ok with this turn of events. But what I don't get is how they are actually doing this. I understand that teams still have negotiating exclusivity with players who's conracts officially end tommorrow, but that seems different then what the Packers did here.
Didn't know that regarding the extension of deadline. In fact, I just saw some tape of a guy earlier to day from the NFL saying that an extension is "still on the table". Huh. Seems like that's something of a good sign, no?
Yeah. If the players stick together I don't see how the owners can win this. They are the ones who are stuck with the existing debt loads and other financial obligations. And with de-certification scheduled for sometime today, that really gives the owners fits because then they can't even negotiate.
If the owners extend the contract however, it will definetely be a win for the players. I'm sure the owners feel by doing so it will lessen their ability to get the changes they want. The thing is, all they have to do is put their finances on the table so that the players association can see what expenses the owners are talking about. But the owners won't do that, and in the end that's what's going to sink them if this ever goes to court or ends up in Congress.
In cutting Hawk he became a free agent. Once a player is a free agent in this manner (this year) they are free to negotiate with any team. Shaun Rogers, for example, has already signed with New Orleans because of this rule. Being cut was a formality for Hawk, basically; he was only negotiating with Green Bay, and they were just about set on the deal - $10 million was just clearly more than he's worth.
I completely disagree. If they extend the contract it most likely will not be for a full year, it will probably be for two or three months. That gives the owners two or three months to stall and drag their heels, and they'll do whatever they can if they feel there is no way to beat the players to push negotiations closer to September. Why? They assume (correctly IMO) that as soon as players start missing paychecks they'll be a whole lot more willing to cave to some demands. I'm sure that most, if not all owners, would make it through the season with no income from the team just fine. I'd bet that at least half the players will not be able to do the same.
But seven, if all the owners are going to do is drag their heels, there's no reason for them to extend the deadline. They may as well drag their heels now. I heard that if there was going to be an extension it would be for 6 months but that was from ESPN, so who knows.
The owners have debt load which has to be paid monthly so they lose money nearly right away. Now being that most of them are billionaires, they probably won't miss the money but they still are losing it.
It's going to depend on how much the rich players will help out the less rich. We'll see.
Extending the deadline means that no outside parties get involved in negotiations. That makes it a lot easier for owners to stall than if arbitrators or congress or whoever are pushing both sides. There's no doubt that it hurts everyone if there's no season, I just really see it hurting the players so much more, and with the money involved (9 billion dollars is a whole lot) I think the owners are not going to budge unless absolutely necessary. You may be right and extending the deadline will work out for the players, I just don't think so because of how much they have to lose.
A lot boils down to the owners' agreements with their financiers. If the TV revenue issue does, indeed, constitute a default event, then some owners may suddenly become quite motivated to get this settled quickly.
Yeah the extension of the deadline does help the players because it keeps the existing CBA intact, which they feel is acceptable. It also helps in the negotiations because it means that the owners blinked first. And if they blink first, perhaps they will finally be willing to negotiate in good faith, i.e. show the players the books so they all can come to some kind of agreement on off the top money.
One argument I heard today that I hadn't considered is the David Doty factor. Doty is the federal judge who ruled the other day on the TV money in a way favorable to the players and he's been the federal judge assigned to NFL labor issues since after the 1987 strike. So the argument goes that since Doty has generally ruled in favor of the players, the owners want to get rid of him. And the way they get rid of him is to let the current CBA expire. Because if that happens, a new judge will be assigned for future legal disputes.
Interesting angle.
Since judges are anything but impartial, it matters a LOT what judge you have for your case.
I do hope they get something worked out relatively quickly. Given that the NBA and MLB are also seeing the end of their current CBA's this year, 2011 has the potential to be a very bad year for professional sports fans.
24 hour extension. Seems an odd turn of events. I don't know if that means they are very close to a deal or if its some token move by both sides.
I'm curious what this 24-hour extension means, if anything. Do the sides feel they're really that close to an agreement, or is this just posturing where both sides realize it's better all around if the agreement expires on a Friday night, which softens the initial hit they'll take in the media?
The big question is if the owners showed the players the books. If so, then they could be mopping up. If not, I don't see the point of 24 hours.
There were reports earlier that the owners had offered at least some financial information, but who know if that was true.
The thing about posturing is that both sides would have to be thinking that way since both had to agree to the extension. And 24 hours means nothing if they are still far apart and neither side has moved on their positions.
I'm trying to be optimistic, though.
No, the players didn't have to agree to the extension per se. If the owners extended the CBA then (unless the players de-certified) it would still be in force. Now I don't know the timing of the de-certification process. I don't know if the players have to de-certify before the CBA expires or if they can still de-certify after the CBA expires. If they had to do it before, then yes, the players would have to agree not to de-certify in the next 24 hours.
Various reports include quotes from the player reps saying they agreed to the extension, so yes, they did apparently agree. The owners can't force the CBA to go on another day and the players could have simply said "no" to an extension and then done whatever they planned to do once the CBA officially expired tonight.
As for why the 24 hours, various reports say it's to give them time to figure out the details of a longer extension, something like a week or so.
They do.
Anyone trying to follow this (or football fans in general) really should have profootballtalk on their daily web-rounds:
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/
That's Mike Florio's site. It's awesome.
Both of you are right and I was wrong about the agreement thing. Noises are being made about a longer extension but the LA Times today said that the owners still wouldn't put their financials on the table.
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