Will the "Williams Wall" Case Sack the NFL's Entire Labor Agreement?

A few months ago, the biggest question surrounding the pending suspension of the "Williams Wall" was the blow it could deal to the Vikings' pass rush.

At this point, however, it's time to wonder whether a court victory by Minnesota's two star defensive tackles—whose suspensions were blocked again by a judge today—will land a knockout punch on the league's collective bargaining agreement.

When Pat and Kevin Williams (no relation) first drew four-game bans for testing positive for a banned diuretic last October, along with a handful of other players, the notion of toppling the NFL's doping policy via lawsuit seemed absurd.

After all, the rules were crystal clear: Put a banned substance in your body, and you sit, no matter how it got there or whether it was on the label. The Players' Association signed off on the policy as part of the collective bargaining agreement.

And really, that's just about the only way a drug-testing program can work. You need to leave complaints about tainted supplements, rogue physicians, and other "accidental" ingestion at the door. If you test clean, you're clean; if not, you're suspended.

As Bill Parcells might have put it, "You are what your urine says you are."

The league's drug policy may have plenty of other problems—HGH, designer steroids, suspensions for marijuana use—but until the Williams' case, ambiguity on the consequences of a positive test wasn't one of them.

In this case, the question that most impacts the NFL's doping rules is whether players can challenge the policy based on state labor laws.

Via federal appeal, the league hopes to establish that players cannot contest the drug tests. Winning that battle would be a big step in quashing further challenges to the policy.

But what happens if the NFL loses?

If some or all of the CBA's provisions become open to challenge in state court, the league's labor agreement effectively goes down in flames.

Even a relatively minor victory for the Williamses on the state level—a ruling that the league was out of line in stepping up testing after the first positive, for instance, or that the league is limited in its ability to discipline employees for using a legal product at a non-work location on their own time, would send CBA spiraling into chaos.

Drug testing could become a case-by-case quagmire. The Williamses have already staved off their suspensions for five games and counting—why wouldn't other players who felt slighted by suspensions employ a similar tactic to keep playing (and getting paid) as long as possible?

What about the code of conduct and the discipline Roger Goodell administers for incidents that take place off the field, outside of business hours? Is that up for debate, as well?

What about the financial side of the equation—roster cuts, the franchise tag, and the cap? If the CBA isn't ironclad at the state level, there are very messy questions to answer about how the league's labor agreement jibes with workers' rights under state laws, both in Minnesota and elsewhere.

In other words, the Williams' case could be the loose thread that unravels the NFL's entire labor relations structure.

Want to chew on a real doomsday scenario? Think about the ramifications across all pro sports if a precedent in which state court decisions can pick apart league labor agreements is established.

Ultimately, it shouldn't come down to that. The cut-and-dried nature of the league's drug policy should give the NFL the edge in the long run here, regardless of the circumstances surrounding who knew what about the contents of the diuretic in question.

Then again, most of us expected this case to be resolved much faster than it has been. The courts presiding over it clearly see some grey area in the NFL's substance rules, and at this stage, the outcome is no sure thing.

Vikings fans hate the idea of losing the Williamses for a quarter of the season. But if the two do manage to dodge their suspensions, no one with an interest in the NFL should  relish the wider implications for the game.