NFLPA Claims It 'Trusted the League at Its Word': Why Did It Start Now?

First of all, if you haven't read my colleague Michael Schottey's post on the NFLPA’s claim that the league’s teams engaged in collusion during the 2010 uncapped year, please do so. It's an excellent overview of the union's complaint. 

To me, this entire episode boils down to one very important moment when the union could have and should have stood up and fought back against the league—but chose not to.

Sometime during the week of March 5, the league approached the union about signing off on the cap penalties for the Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys. As the union tells it, it was given an ultimatum: Sign off on the penalties or the overall salary cap would be reduced drastically.

The union's assistant executive director of external affairs, George Atallah, told me via email that they were given a 5 p.m. deadline on Friday, March 9 to sign off on the cap penalties, though he could not recall exactly when the NFL approached them. He indicated they were given one or two days at most. 

On a conference call with the media on Wednesday, the union's lead counsel, Jeffrey Kessler, was asked why the union did not investigate the league's claims that the Redskins and Cowboys had gained a competitive advantage during 2010. He responded, in part, "At no time did the league indicate [to us] that there was a secret cap. We trusted the league at its word. We have never had any indication of anything like this secret conspiracy that has come out, at all."

The part that I have highlighted for emphasis is the key to this entire thing for me. 

Since being elected to the position of executive director for the players union, DeMaurice Smith and his staff have fought with the league on a seemingly never-ending series of points, often with good reason.

The NFL, particularly leading up to the lockout, was repeatedly found to be engaged in what can only be described as some shady tactics, from its attempt to secure "lockout insurance" from the television networks to the revelation that the league tried putting in farcically-low projected revenue growth numbers so that when the league easily surpassed them, all of the overage would revert to the league, rather than be split with the players.

The list goes on. The union fought every one of them and has usually come out on the winning side. 

So why—when asked to sign off on a proposal from the league that set off collusion alarm bells for every single person who has since read about it—did it not fight back? 

Atallah's answer to me on this was thus:

"

Remember, collusion is an easy thing to allege, but it is not an easy thing to prove. A filing like this is definitely not something we could have put together in days and more serious evidence came in after that deal.

"

He's right, of course. However, filing a suit is not the only way of fighting back; in this case, the union could have quite easily refused to sign off on the penalties and, when asked why, cited collusion suspicions.

The league would have been forced to follow through on its threat of lowering the salary cap, and the union could paint it as the villain while investigating collusion.

As it stands, the union's case rests on the interpretation of the “Stipulation of Dismissal” that both parties signed off on back in August of 2011, but I'm not going to bore you with that. Basically, if the suit goes forward, U.S. District Court Judge David Doty will most likely rule in favor of the players, and the league would most likely win on appeal. 

What makes no sense to me is the union's contention that the league was “imposing a secret $123 million per club" cap in 2010. If that is so, according to salary numbers over at ProFootballTalk, at least half the league's teams were in violation of it.

I understand the penalties for Washington and Dallas involve cap charges and not cash expenditures. My point here is that the union is alleging there was a secret cap that nearly half the league would have been in violation of, yet only four teams were punished—why? 

And, again, why did the union trust a league it never had before and probably never will again when asked to sign off on what it must have thought were penalties for violating some kind of gentlemen's agreement between the league's teams, which would have naturally led to collusion suspicions? 

PFT's Mike Florio has hinted more than once that the union needed to ensure the cap did not decrease to ensure DeMaurice Smith would be re-elected. The union categorically denies those claims, but it's hard to understand why else this union, which has fought the NFL on almost anything and everything (it's fighting about thigh pads, for God's sake) would just sign off on what it obviously thought was collusion.