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Every NFL team will now play 17 games, as agreed upon in the new collective bargaining agreement.
By Adam Stites Updated Mar 31, 2020, 2:01pm EDT
The NFL and NFL Players Association didn’t need a lockout or a strike to hammer out a new collective bargaining agreement.
The two sides got the job done just ahead of the beginning of the 2020 league year, allowing for most changes in the agreement to go into effect in March. Negotiations began in April 2019, nearly two years ahead of the last CBA’s expiration, and finished with a deal less than a year later.
It wasn’t without any hiccups, though. The league owners approved a proposal only for the NFLPA executive committee to quickly vote against it. The league met with the NFLPA a week later for a final round of negotiations, and only small tweaks were made.
Despite the NFLPA’s executive committee voting 7-4 against the proposal and only a 17-14 vote (one abstained) among team reps, the new CBA was sent to all the league’s players for a vote. It narrowly passed with 51.5 percent of players approving the agreement (1,019 yes votes, 959 no votes).
Now that a deal has been reached, here are the major takeaways of the new CBA:
The NFL switched to a 16-game schedule in 1978 and kept that total for over four decades. Now, the league is jamming another game into the mix, although that won’t happen until at least the 2021 season.
The reasoning isn’t hard to grasp. There are more profits to be had in everything from ticket sales to television deals. The negatives are obvious too. Players already endure injuries during their grueling schedule. More games will inevitably mean more damage.
For fans, it means a regular season that now begins a week earlier after a newly truncated preseason (three games instead of four). It also means records — which have been falling left and right anyway — will undoubtedly be smashed by players with an extra game to play.
A third wild card berth will be added to each conference, expanding the postseason field to 14 teams. That change will begin in 2020. Three games will be played on Saturday and three will be played on Sunday during Wild Card Weekend.
While the change will add two middling teams to the postseason, the biggest change will be at the top of the bracket. Now just one team from each conference will earn a first-round bye. Had the format been in place, recent Super Bowl matchups could’ve been much different.
Unlike the 17-game schedule, this change will happen immediately and be in place for the 2020 season.
As a tradeoff for adding another week to the regular season and two more playoff games, the NFL will increase roster sizes. The active roster will expand from 53 to 55 and the practice squad will grow from 12 players to 14.
Altogether, that’s 128 more NFL players earning a salary. It helps too that an extra active players on game day will lighten the load for their teammates.
It doesn’t affect the game itself much, but the revenue share is the crux of every CBA negotiation between the NFL and NFLPA. It’s a multi-billion dollar company and just a couple percentage points constitute huge sums of money.
In the last CBA negotiated in 2011, the agreement said that the player’s share had to average at least 47 percent over the next decade. This time around, players will get a guaranteed 48 percent beginning in 2021. It can increase to as much as 48.5, which — according to the NFL’s estimates — will net players around a $5 billion increase for players over the next 10 years.
Squeezing in another 16 regular-season and two postseason games’ worth of revenue could mean increased profits for the NFL too, though — even after losing out on a percentage point.
The increases for players are very specific. A sampling:
The rapidly increasing minimum salary is probably the biggest positive of the agreement for the players’ side.
A primary reason NFL players are expected to ratify the proposed CBA: Nearly 60% of league makes minimum base salaries, which would spike immediately by over 20% and eclipse $1 million for all players by 2029. From term sheet NFLPA sent to agents (in 1000s, by credited seasons): pic.twitter.com/kRbLlzqGjO
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) February 27, 2020
The decrease in fines isn’t as clear, only that there will be an “overall reduction in on-field fines.” On the other hand, there is language in the CBA that will make it more difficult for players who plan to holdout in the fall. Those particular fines will be increased, sometimes guaranteed, and players will lose accrued seasons quicker.
There will also be a neutral decision-maker for most discipline cases, taking that role mostly out of Roger Goodell’s hands.
Plenty has changed since the last CBA was agreed upon in 2011. Several states have legalized or decriminalized personal use of marijuana, quickly antiquating the league’s harsh punishments for the drug.
Now there will be significantly less testing for marijuana, much higher amount allowed (from a limit 35 nanograms to 150), and no suspensions for players who test positive.
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes earned MVP honors in his second season and was named Super Bowl MVP after his third.
Mahomes clearly outplayed his rookie contract by a mile, but under the old CBA that didn’t mean much. Now, players who excel early in their career will get a significant bonus.
If a player makes the Pro Bowl twice in their first three seasons, their fifth-year option will spike to the price of the franchise tag.
Not only will that mean more money for those players, it could also mean an earlier escape to free agency if a team is unwilling to open up the pocketbooks for a lofty extension.
Take Los Angeles Rams cornerback Jalen Ramsey , for example. He was due to receive $13.7 million from the Rams on his fifth-year option in 2020. But under the new CBA, his status as a three-time Pro Bowler would make that number jump another $3 million or so. That’d make using the franchise tag to retain Ramsey in 2021 an extremely pricy venture for the Rams.
