NFL Players Will Not Be Voting on the New Contract Today After All. This is Not Great News if You're Hoping to Re-sign Tom Brady

It's not in my nature to be following labor negotiations, management offers, executive board recommendations and rank and file votes. Not ever. And certainly not on a Friday afternoon. Even when I was in a union, all I ever really asked was if we were getting a raise, how much is it and where do I sign. 

But this one going on between the NFL and the Players Association has a bigger, more direct effect on my life than just how much money I'm making. So I was hoping they'd wrap this up by today. I'll explain how in a second, but just to recap the events of a weird day

First, the league made an offer. One that includes adding a playoff team and a extra postseason game to each conference and converting one preseason game into a regular season game. In exchange the players would get $100 million more per year. 

The NFLPA executive committee voted against it:

Nevertheless, the 32 player reps voted to send the proposal to the 1,900 or so NFLPA members to let them vote on it.

It just takes a simple majority to pass. But as of this latest update from this afternoon, they've decided to wait. Possibly to come back with a counter offer and see if they can get a better offer. 

And this matters to Patriots fans especially, not because it means the two sides are heading for a work stoppage or anything of the sort. Any time anything like that has even remotely happened, the players have collapsed like a folding table at a Bills game. The MLB players shut down a World Series to keep their CBA. NFL players caved after missing one preseason game. When it comes to labor battles, the NFLPA are the droid troopers from the "Star Wars" prequels.

No, this matters in New England because the sooner a new agreement is in place, the easier it will be for the Patriots to re-sign Tom Brady. 

Like with all salary cap matters, the reasons are complex and confusing and trying to make sense of it is like trying to decipher the Code of Hammurabi. So I look for people who can make some sense of it that my simple, reptilian, brain can process. In a nutshell, Brady's situation involves the $13.5 million in dead money that kicks in if they don't sign him before the start of free agency, the end of this current CBA and their inability to kick that cap hit down the road. 

Got it? Me neither. So here's Doug Kyed from NESN explain it so even I can understand:

Currently, without a new CBA, there’s a “30 percent rule” in place that prevents a player’s salary from increasing by more than 30 percent from one season to the next. Without a new CBA, teams also can’t add voidable years to a player’s contract. Those restrictions make it difficult to push weighty cap hits into the future.

 If a new CBA is jointly agreed upon between the NFLPA and owners before March 18, however, it should be easier to roll that dead money into the future. … then that $13.5 million is less prohibitive. The Patriots could sign Brady to a large signing bonus and prorate the majority of the money into the future either through an actual extension or by adding voidable years onto the deal. Essentially, they could subtract that $6.75 million from Brady’s 2020 cap hit with that proration and kick it into 2021 and beyond.

So there you go. Ish. If a new CBA is passed, then the old one becomes irrelevant. A Brady re-signing becomes more practical because they can pay him more and spread the cap hit out. Yes, it will mean delaying the inevitable. And eventually that bill will come due. But my entire life I've been dealing with unpleasant things my entire life by delaying them as much as possible and hoping they somehow solve themselves. (It's why I never filled that cholesterol medicine prescription when the doctor found my veins were basically filled with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, and I'm doing just fine, thanks.) And if the immediate benefit is getting Tom Brady on the 2020 roster, then Future Jerry will just have to worry about salary cap hits and dead money and all that. Delay suffering long enough and eventually some meteor wipes us all out anyway. Problem solved. 

I've said before the NFL alignment, schedule and postseason set up is an ecosystem in perfect, harmonic balance. And I hate to see the greedheads in the league mess with it just to make more money. But if the price of a watered down playoff format and a season that is too long means Brady signs and extension, then that's a price I'm willing to pay. And I was hoping it'd get done today. Let's hope the NFLPA doesn't drag this out.