Last Thursday afternoon, NFL fans and media waited and waited on news from a federal mediator’s office in Washington D.C. Those inside were reps for the NFL owners including Commissioner Roger Goodell as well as NFLPA people including executive director DeMaurice Smith.
NFL Lockout Truly Came Down To Last Minute Last Week
We heard on Thursday afternoon that the two sides had agreed to a 24-hour extension to the deadline that came that night. The news of the extension was very last minute as the NFLPA, who is expected to decertify if a deal isn’t struck, would have had to file for decertification by Thursday afternoon.
Just how down-to-the-last-minute was it? Jim Trotter of SI.com explains:
With only five minutes to go before the union’s deadline to decertify last Thursday -- a move that might have obliterated the NFL as we know it today -- a player walked into the negotiating room that included commissioner Roger Goodell, league attorney Jeff Pash, NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith and union president Kevin Mawae and declared: “We’re done! We’re decertifying.”
A player made a hand-across-the-throat gesture indicating to cut it off and an NFLPA rep was on the phone with a clerk in the Minnesota court room that presides over the expiring CBA. The union was, apparently, not bluffing. Or, if they were bluffing, they had the NFL believing them.
The reason they likely weren’t bluffing is that decertification is arguably their biggest weapon right now and it would open a can of worms that the league does not want to see.
We just didn’t realize how close the NFLPA was to using that weapon.
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