DeMaurice Smith and NFLPA Could End Up Costing NFL Players over $1 Billion

When DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the National Football League Players Association, made the call to break off collective bargaining negotiations with the NFL last March, he told the media that the NFL's final offer would have been "the worst deal in the history of sports."

It's possible that Smith led the union through the lockout only to arrive at an even worse deal. 

From Greg A. Bedard in his "Sunday Football Notes" in yesterday's Boston Globe: 

"

...the NFLPA told agents at their annual meeting at the scouting combine - they were told the cap would explode in 2014 when the new television money was due to hit - but it falls way short of what the NFL offered the union before the lockout started.

After making statements to the television cameras, Smith walked into a conference room at NFLPA headquarters and handed the assembled print media financial details of the NFL’s final offer - which he would later term “the worst deal in the history of sports.’’

"

Bedard then breaks down what was in the offer the league had on the table that the union walked away from—and what the reality they are facing is now. 

"

The NFL wanted the salary cap to be $114 million in 2011. That would have been a drastic cut from the $123 million it was in 2009, the previous capped year.

After the new CBA was struck, the ’11 salary cap was $120.4 million. So the union gained $204.8 million in salary across 32 teams in the first year alone from what the NFL proposed.

The NFL offered a cap of $121 million in ’12 - it will be $120.6 million. That’s a loss of $12.8 million for the players.

In ’13, the NFL’s proposed cap was $128 million. If the actual cap stays flat at $121 million, that’s a loss of $224 million.

The proposed ’14 cap was $134 million. If the actual number is again at $121 million, players will have lost $416 million in a year they expect to strike it rich.

That’s $652.8 million lost in the final three years - $448 million if the gains in ’11 are included.

And if 2015 also remains flat, the players will have lost more than a billion dollars from 2012-15.

"

All around the league we've seen agents getting their guys deals that will make them free agents heading into 2014, the year the new television money is supposed to make the cap explode and make a bunch of players rich. 

Players like the Packers' Jermichael Finley, the Bengals' Anthony Collins and the Jets' Mark Sanchez are just a few of the players who recently re-signed through the 2013 season with the teams that drafted them, essentially extending their contracts in hopes of landing a big pay day in 2014. 

If the NFLPA did indeed tell agents that the salary cap would "explode" in 2014 when, in fact, the cap will stay flat until 2015 - that is an egregious error that could end up causing Smith and others their jobs. Indeed, new NFLPA president Domonique Foxworth tells Bedard he is planning to "crunch the numbers" soon.  

Regardless, there is a very real possibility that there won't be any "explosion" in the salary cap at all, with minimal increases being made every year starting in 2015.

Expect this to become another headline-grabbing battle over the course of the next two years.