When I was in Dallas, I was reminded that back in October QB Aaron Rodgers was approved as the Green Bay Packers player representative. It surprised me at the time that he would take such a prominent position in the upcoming labor dispute. The team's previous player's rep. was RT Mark Tauscher, who is about as anonymous as a 10+ year veteran can be. Now that he's back on Twitter, there's no doubt what he thinks about the labor battle:
The talks for a new collective bargaining agreement have gone poorly this week, with the owners canceling the last negotiating session. The sides are $1 billion apart, and the entire subject is summarized by Joel over at SB Nation.com. Mike Florio made a good point that the NFL should be blamed for walking away from the players' opening offer of a 50/50 revenue split. It was just their opening offer, and the NFL hasn't even publicized exactly what it wants.
The coaches have mostly stayed out of it. But Mike McCarthy said he "barely made it through 16 games" when asked about an 18 game season. As much talk as there's been about the stress of 18 games on the players, there's a mental stress placed on all the coaches with those two additional games.
My view is that there's going to be a lockout, and it's going to be a long one because the owners have $4 billion in guaranteed revenues as lockout insurance. Are you expecting a lockout, or will cooler heads prevail before the end of the month?