Redskins, Cowboys could go “nuclear” over cap mess

[HoopheadVII]

Originally Posted by SBXVII

This is where your wrong. There was no negotiation with the NFLPA about keeping costs down. Heres how I know.... the NFLPA suspected the owners were colluding. The didn't have the proof but they knew the owners had agreed to something. Had the league denied the contracts the Redskins and Cowboys made the NFLPA would have had their proof of collusion and the most likely there would have been no football because we would still be waiting for both sides to be heard in court. The NFLPA would have filed in court that the league was colluding.

The league knew this. DS and JJ banked on this so their deals could get approved. The league was FORCED to approve the deals so they wouldn't get into trouble for colluding.

Then two years later the Exec Committee decides it wants to punish the two teams for not going along with the program. But they still can't issue a punishment with out showing they colluded. So they call in the NFLPA and say hey we want to punish these two teams. If you don't go along with the program then we will just lower the CAP 3-7 mill for each team. Which means you guys will lose millions across the board, $96 mill at the least and $224 mill at the most. If you go along with the program the league will keep the $$ amount where it is at now. The NFLPA could care less if 30 owners want to punish 2 to the sum of $46 mill, it's a lot less then what they would have been losing.

You seem to be confusing "paying as much as they want in an uncapped year" with "unfairly shifting salary cap hit from capped year to uncapped year." They're two different things

Punishing for the former would likely constitute illegal collusion.

The part of my post you highlighted refers to the latter. It's clear they agreed this principle with the NFLPA because there are multiple clauses in the 2006 CBA that specifically prevent teams from doing this.

The League would argue that they didn't disapprove the contracts because it would prove collusion, they're saying they didn't disapprove the contracts within 10 days because that would have created an unnecessary discussion over something relatively small while the League and NFLPA were in the middle of much bigger discussions.

I'm guessing the real reason is that the Commissioner wasn't going to move on this until he got pressure from enough owners that he had to take action - and those complaints didn't come within the 10 day window for disapproval.