2021 NFL Offseason Thread -- Trades/Cuts/Free Agent Signings/Firings, Etc.

[Patrick Bateman 3903]

 

[Nicole44 22027]

So Chicago gonna try Foles part two with Wentz? Guy hates constructive criticism and allegedly is a poor leader. He supposedly wanted out since 12/20/20 and it’s alleged bc he doesn’t want an open QB competition with Hurts who has no problem with criticism , leadership and preparation. Wentz has been radio silent for 8 weeks. What’s weird to me is what happened to Doug Pederson...like did he fall in a rabbit hole? Guy just completely disappeared. 

[Funk Doctor Spock 11923]

13 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

So Chicago gonna try Foles part two with Wentz? Guy hates constructive criticism and allegedly is a poor leader. He supposedly wanted out since 12/20/20 and it’s alleged bc he doesn’t want an open QB competition with Hurts who has no problem with criticism , leadership and preparation. Wentz has been radio silent for 8 weeks. What’s weird to me is what happened to Doug Pederson...like did he fall in a rabbit hole? Guy just completely disappeared. 

He (Pedersen) caught lightening in a bottle that year with Foles. The stars aligned and he lucked into a SB win. That's all I can really think of. I don't know much about the guy, but going from winning the SB 3 years ago to being fired says a lot. 

[Brothahorn 10085]

Even Easterbunny laughs at the Eagles asking price for Wentz.

[youdunnf'dup 2147]

On 2/7/2021 at 7:03 AM, MNLonghornFUKM said:

I’ll be that guy...is Calvin Johnson really a hall of famer? He quit on his team, and his numbers rank amongst those id have a hard time seeing give a hall of fame speech.


He’s tied with Brandon Marshall for TD receptions and had one year where he caught triple digit passes one time. He caught 122 catches but 5 tds. He was a moss specimen, and who after cris carter really didn’t have a teammate that was a threat like CJ. Are they just gonna hand out heads for guys who had really good careers?

 

[cmontexas 3253]

How is Wentz any better than Jameis Winston?

[LTtxfan 48980]

Really hope that Philly fucks this up...   😋

Wentz trade to Bears or Colts not imminent, per Garafolo

4H AGO      BY ALEX SHAPIRO

Quote

After reports surfaced Saturday night insinuating the Bears were on the verge of trading for Carson Wentz, many fans thought the team might have it’s new starting quarterback by lunch on Monday. But on NFL Now, reporter Mike Garafolo told people waiting for big news to break not to hold their breath.A

“A lot of people thought, ‘Ok, Super Bowl’s over, and then in the morning this trade’s going to be finalized,’” Garafolo said. “I made calls to everyone involved in this one, and I was told this morning that nothing is imminent. The Eagles are basically waiting for an offer that they feel is worthwhile to trade away Carson Wentz.”

In fact, Garafolo says there’s a chance that a deal for Wentz doesn’t come to fruition at all.

“One of the options is still on the table— I don’t think this is likely, but it’s still on the table— is that they don’t get an option that they deem worthy,” Garfolo said. “And they say, ‘Ok Carson Wentz, report to training camp.’

“I believe in the end he is going to be traded, and they will get an offer that will make them part with Wentz. I still can’t see a path for him to come back to the Eagles.”

Garafolo did confirm that Ryan Pace was one of the GMs in the running for Wentz, however.

“The Bears and the Colts are amongst the teams involved,” Garafolo said. “I am told there are more teams involved, and I will also tell you there are other quarterbacks that the Bears and the Colts are keeping an eye on.”

With so many QBs reportedly on the market this offseason, it’s hard to get a sense of when new dominoes will fall, and how other deals like the Stafford-Goff swap affect asking prices. Plus, there are several free agents available that teams could sign, like Ryan Fitzpatrick and Cam Newton.

“So, a lot of moving parts,” Garafolo said. “A lot of chess, a lot of poker being played here. I can’t really put you on a timeframe here. I can’t tell you how quickly, but it could be relatively quickly.”

 

 

[Machinator 32097]

 

[Machinator 32097]

 

[Sandman 3402]

1 hour ago, Machinator said:

 

I seem to remember Wilson shilling for some "recovery water" with "nano-bubbles" that was supposed to keep him from getting concussed.

Drink up, fuckface.

[Machinator 32097]

 

[LTtxfan 48980]

 

[LTtxfan 48980]

 

[LTtxfan 48980]

 

[LTtxfan 48980]

 

[LTtxfan 48980]

 

[Nicole44 22027]

 

[Machinator 32097]

 

[LTtxfan 48980]

Report: Colts offered two second-round picks for Wentz

By RILEY GATES 9 hours ago

It’s clear at this point that the Philadelphia Eagles are hoping to trade quarterback Carson Wentz and move forward with Jalen Hurts leading the offense. The Indianapolis Colts are thought of to be one of the contenders for Wentz and have even reportedly offered a trade for Wentz, according to NFL insider Ron Jaworski. But the offer is not what the Eagles were hoping to get.

“The Eagles and Howie Roseman are trying to prop Carson Wentz up to create the best value in him,” Jaworski said. “The talk is of a (first round pick), almost similar to what Detroit got in the Jared Goff situation — two number ones and Jared Goff. That won’t happen here. That will not happen.

“My understanding is that the Colts have offered two second-round draft choices, maybe a third or fourth somewhere down the road. That appears to be the best offer I have heard from all the sources I have around the league. That’s the best actual offer that has been made. I’m sure the Eagles, Howie Roseman, Jeffery Lurie would like to get a number one out of this, but as of now, that doesn’t seem to be happening.”

A five-time National Champion at the FCS level, Wentz was Philadelphia’s starting quarterback from the first game of his NFL career. He struggled a bit as a rookie, throwing 16 touchdowns and 14 interceptions, but his 2017 season give the appearance that the Eagles had their quarterback of the future. Wentz threw for 3,296 yards, 33 touchdowns and just seven interceptions through 13 games. Wentz was on-pace for a possible MVP award that season until a torn ACL ended his season. Later that year, the Eagles won Super Bowl LII behind Nick Foles.

Wentz, a Second Team All-Pro selection in 2017, had two strong seasons after coming back from his injury, but the drafting of Jalen Hurts in the 2020 NFL Draft had some wondering if a change was coming. Wentz started 12 games in 2020 but threw for 16 touchdowns and 15 interceptions, leading to an in-game quarterback change to Hurts that would end up sticking for the remainder of the season. The Eagles finished 4-11-1 this season, leading to the firing of coach Doug Pederson.

According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, it’s not a matter of if Wentz will be traded, but when?  “Carson Wentz talks have been heating up, getting enough interest from teams like the Bears, the Colts, others,” Schefter recently said. “He’s going to get traded here. The question is when do the Eagles finally make that decision and what do they get back in return?”

[Patrick Bateman 3903]

Not sure I trust Jaws on the situation..... His sources are almost surely from the Eagles and probably being used to try and run up the cost.  

[Machinator 32097]

 

[cmontexas 3253]

Sad to read. Apparently he'd been living in that hotel since Jan 11, his family filed a missing person's report last week but the police found him at the hotel. A few days later found dead in his room. 

[Machinator 32097]

 

[Radical Larry 28529]

[youdunnf'dup 2147]

3 minutes ago, Radical Larry said:

 

I wonder how it could turn into a 1st? I assume Indy is gonna be good so there’s a huge difference between pick 25 and pick 57. 
 

Frank Reich was wentz’s secret sauce. If he can even get him back to 2019 wentz and keep him healthy that’s a good trade for both teams. 

[Michael Knight 12898]

2 minutes ago, youdunnf'dup said:

I wonder how it could turn into a 1st? I assume Indy is gonna be good so there’s a huge difference between pick 25 and pick 57. 
 

Frank Reich was wentz’s secret sauce. If he can even get him back to 2019 wentz and keep him healthy that’s a good trade for both teams. 

Probably contingent on # of starts

[Radical Larry 28529]

I wonder how it could turn into a 1st? I assume Indy is gonna be good so there’s a huge difference between pick 25 and pick 57. 
 
Frank Reich was wentz’s secret sauce. If he can even get him back to 2019 wentz and keep him healthy that’s a good trade for both teams. 

[Horny Bull 2759]

 

[MNLonghornFUKM 8799]

I wonder how it could turn into a 1st? I assume Indy is gonna be good so there’s a huge difference between pick 25 and pick 57. 
 
Frank Reich was wentz’s secret sauce. If he can even get him back to 2019 wentz and keep him healthy that’s a good trade for both teams. 

A full season of Hurts will have them primed for a top pick.


Good for Carson to get out of that toxic situation with terrible 30+ yr old injured receivers

[youdunnf'dup 2147]

1 minute ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

A full season of Hurts will have them primed for a top pick.


Good for Carson to get out of that toxic situation with terrible 30+ yr old injured receivers

Wouldn’t shock me if they took a qb at 6 this year. 

[TonyTexas 10482]

7 minutes ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

A full season of Hurts will have them primed for a top pick.


Good for Carson to get out of that toxic situation with terrible 30+ yr old injured receivers

Wentz was a big part of that toxic situation. 

[Dr Fear 1265]

Wentz 2022 salary guarantees in March, so the Colts essentially have him at $48 million over two years, after which they can release him with no dead cap.

[Horn80 6075]

Wentz will do well with Colts.

[Bartles 769]

Wentz has physical and mental issues. Still has a good arm and is big/strong enough to shed some tacklers, but he doesn't read the field worth a shit and isn't very accurate. He had like two friends on the Eagles after five years. I don't think he'll be as good as 2020 Rivers in Indy.

The Eagles, well, fuck. I make fun of the Cowboys for being perpetually in the 6-10 win range, but that seems to be where Philly is locked in for the foreseeable future. The returning OL/DL is OK, and we have a last place schedule, so it's unlikely we pick in the top five or anything next year regardless of how Hurts plays. And I'd say better than 50% chance they take a QB with their first pick this year, giving us two QB-of-future hopefuls with rotting garbage around them.

[youdunnf'dup 2147]

I knew it was bad. I didn’t realize it was this bad. 
 

 

[LTtxfan 48980]

On 2/18/2021 at 10:44 AM, Radical Larry said:

 

Colts- Sounds about right for a decent deal for Wentz

Philly- taking a huge salary cap hit ($33.8mill) and getting only two so so picks in return  😂😂😂 

 

 

Edited February 19, 2021 by LTtxfan

[Zeus 5950]

Dak is the best QB in the NFC East by a mile - and Jerry Jones is playing hard ball 

[TommyGufano 6021]

So uh.... Isaiah Wilson quit?

[Machinator 32097]

Yeah, total waste of a first-round pick.

 

[Flash 29]

Tennessee must not pay as well as Georgia.

[Nicole44 22027]

This is just the latest ordeal in what has evolved into a disastrous start to Wilson's NFL career after being selected by the club with the No. 29 overall pick last spring. He recorded just four snaps for the Titans last season and was placed on the reserve/non-football injury list in early December after the 22-year-old dealt with a number of off-the-field issues. Wilson was arrested for DUI in September and was also suspended by the team later in the season for violating club rules. It was after that suspension was lifted when he was placed on the non-football illness list due to  "personal issues."

[Machinator 32097]

 

[Murfdogg21 4412]

13 hours ago, Machinator said:

Yeah, total waste of a first-round pick.

 

His @Twitter handle is accurate. 

[Brothahorn 10085]

A look at how the sausage is made from the player union side.

Quote

 

TWO OPTIONS FOR extending the NFL season were in play in fall 2019, and DeMaurice Smith seemed defiant in the face of one of them. Smith, the veteran executive director of the NFL Players Association, was standing before a room of players, part of his annual tour of locker rooms to deliver an insider's update on negotiations with the league. A deadline was coming fast: The league demanded a new collective bargaining agreement by March 2020, even though the current one didn't expire until early 2021. But owners wanted an early deal because they intended to enter into rights negotiations with their broadcast partners. With the invaluable leverage of guaranteed labor peace for another decade, the owners believed they could secure a 100% increase for broadcast rights, a windfall worth tens of billions.

 

The cornerstone of a league proposal in June 2019 had been to expand the regular season for the first time since 1978, from 16 to either 17 or 18 games. For years, management had floated a longer regular season, but the notion was always roundly dismissed by players -- and Smith -- as a cynical money grab that not incidentally would pose a greater risk to their health and safety. This time, the owners were serious.

 

ESPN Daily

Don Van Natta Jr. joins ESPN Daily to discuss DeMaurice Smith's dual legacies as head of the NFL Players Association. Listen now»

And players stood in near-uniform opposition. They wanted higher salaries and better benefits for their current workload, providing labor for America's most popular sport. Standing in front of the players, left hand in his pocket, right hand in motion, Smith captivated the audience the way he once did as a young litigator inside a courtroom. "My legal advice to you guys on that -- I don't vote -- would be to say, h-to-the-hell f--- no about 18 games," Smith told players. "If we give them the right to dictate our work, nothing good is coming out of it."

 

But 17 games? That, it turns out, was different.

 

A FEW MONTHS later, many players felt as if the league was dictating the terms to De Smith -- and nothing good was coming out of it. On the morning of Thursday, Jan. 30, 2020, Smith stood in a meeting room of Miami's Nobu Hotel. The room was filled with 30 of the 32 player representatives, along with 11 executive committee members, plus union executives and staffers. A deal was close. But first, Smith, only days before his 56th birthday, had to discuss a concession that could potentially kill the deal and split the union: a 17th game.

 

Smith and his executive team already knew that adding another regular-season game was an epic and unpopular move. On Aug. 19, 2019, after negotiations with owners, union executive committee members in a confidential Slack channel discussed management's latest proposal, which included a 17th game and the option for an 18th game down the road, in exchange for a 1% increase in total revenue: "Basic message: without more games, no changes in economic structure." The proposal received severe pushback from some players; others wanted to know what concessions were in play. Negotiations had been suspended that fall, and it took a secret meeting in November between Smith and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft at the New York City apartment of Philadelphia 76ers co-owner Michael Rubin to jump-start talks. During a Dec. 23 conference call between union executives and executive committee members, San Francisco 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman asked point-blank if the union had been negotiating with the league based on 17 games as a foregone conclusion.

 

"Yes," Smith said.

 

Players wondered how the hell one possibility that Smith had cast in skeptical terms a few months earlier had suddenly become nonnegotiable. Few player reps knew that in the 2006 CBA negotiated by Raiders Hall of Famer and legendary union leader Gene Upshaw, owners had won the authority to unilaterally expand the regular season to 18 games. Then, after management opted out of that agreement in 2008, Smith had negotiated language that an expansion could occur "only with NFLPA approval." It proved to be a powerful bargaining chip. Now Smith had extracted a handful of concessions from owners for an added game, including more time off for players and an immediate 20% increase in a player's minimum salary, to $610,000 a year.

 

In Miami, few player reps seemed to care that Smith had pulled off this nifty piece of negotiating, forcing management to pay for something that was once theirs. Smith warned the room that if the union rejected 17 games, players should be prepared for a lockout.

 

"It might last two to three years," he said.

 

Many player reps felt the choice presented to them was hurried and binary, with little or no transparency. The distrust and anger that had built up over months between Smith and the players began to spill over as the afternoon wore on. Aaron Rodgers would soon publicly accuse Smith of "fear-mongering." Smith believed he was only presenting the facts of a proposal and the likely consequences if the players said no. The meeting devolved, as many sessions had over the past year, into a shouting match between player representatives and their embattled leader -- who seemed, to many, more aligned with management than with his own union.

 

"THE FOLKS ON the other side of the table are killers," DeMaurice Smith says from his Washington, D.C., office on a mid-October day. It's a blunt assessment from a man who looks exhausted from the last battle while gearing up for the next one. Smith and the union had spent years preparing for the most recent round of CBA negotiations. He had traveled the country. He had waged loud, public wars with commissioner Roger Goodell while holding private lunches with him. Quietly, often without some of his player reps' knowledge, he had met one-on-one with influential owners such as Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft, and endured months of union infighting. At the end, the CBA passed last March by a slim margin of only 60 votes, boosted by votes from practice-team members, the lowest-paid union members with the most to gain from the new deal's terms. The CBA should have been a moment that defined the power not only of Smith but of the labor force of America's most popular sport, a once-in-a-decade chance to elevate NFL players into NBA players' realm of compensation and influence.

 

But that's not what happened.

 

Instead, after fashioning himself as the league's foremost antagonist, Smith is now viewed by some in his own ranks and by some owners as an asset to management, according to interviews with team owners; current and former union, league and team executives; lawyers and agents; current and former players; and reviews of thousands of public and confidential documents. Smith's opponents say he secured the new CBA while trampling dissenters within his own ranks, presiding over a union that commissioned a law firm to investigate a player rep who questioned his honesty. He benefited from a ratified constitutional change that made it more difficult for an outsider to even run against him, let alone unseat him. On top of it all, the NFLPA caved on the league's two most vital issues: more games and another CBA that stretches forward a decade, a length of time rarely granted by labor unions. In what will likely be his last CBA, Smith delivered what football fans desperately want -- more games and labor peace -- but at a cost to the players that will reveal itself over time. "If we could," says a longtime NFL owner, "every owner would build a statue to De outside their stadiums. That's how good he's been for our business."

 

HOW DID ROGER Goodell's foremost public adversary come to be known by some of the commissioner's bosses as an ally? Nearly a dozen years ago, Smith arrived in the NFL world as a little-known outsider. After Upshaw, a formidable advocate for players, died from cancer on Aug. 20, 2008, it seemed a foregone conclusion to league and union insiders that another former player or league lifer would be elected as the fourth executive director in the players' association's history. The favorites were former Philadelphia Eagles star and NFL executive Troy Vincent, former veteran defensive end Trace Armstrong and longtime league consultant David Cornwell. The long shot was Smith, then a 45-year-old partner in the Washington law firm Patton Boggs. He had no experience in sports business or labor law, but he was friends with former Washington great Charles Mann and served on the board for a charity launched by Mann and several former teammates. A search committee tasked with finding union candidates reached out to Smith.

 

With the help of George Atallah, a crisis communications specialist who would become the union spokesman, Smith pursued the job. And at the union's election meeting at the five-star Fairmont Kea Lani hotel in Maui in mid-March 2009, Smith closed the deal. Over four days of discussions, he dazzled the room, emphasizing his corporate background, expertise with Congress, alliances with President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. -- and willingness to "use every bullet in the cylinder" in shootouts with the league. On the first ballot, Smith was unanimously elected.

 

On one of Smith's first days at work, he opened the desk drawer of his Washington office and found a handwritten speech. It was by Upshaw. Smith read the speech, written over two columns in neat, black ink. It felt like a talisman, and one line stood out to Smith as wise and inspirational -- and as a warning: "Owners will always take a short-term loss for a long-term gain."

 

Upshaw's words were both a nod to the strength of the enemy -- and a clarifier of Smith's mission. His job was not only to notch wins at the negotiating table. It was to ensure that the league didn't break the union.

 

AMERICA'S GREAT UNION leaders, such as Walter Reuther at the United Automobile Workers, find ways to become more powerful than any CEO. In sports, Marvin Miller transitioned from running United Steelworkers to manhandling baseball team owners in a zero-sum game. Smith, though, walked headfirst into a buzz saw -- not only as an outsider and a Black man in a room of nearly all white billionaires but because, from the start, he and Goodell were on a collision course. Goodell "loved" and "respected" Upshaw, according to a former senior league executive, but the commissioner was unsure of what to make of Smith, whom he saw as "just another lawyer, a pain in the ass." For the new CBA, Goodell's mission was clear: Owners wanted revenge after the 2006 CBA had lavished players with up to 57.5% of "total revenues," as defined in the deal, though union officials now insist the players' share, after owners' deductions, was less than that but still north of 50%. The upcoming 2011 CBA negotiations were seen as a street fight over "who could f--- the players worse," one of the league's negotiators says now. Owners bragged about a $4 billion war chest and hired an outside law firm, Proskauer Rose, that represented all four major American sports leagues and would help engineer four work stoppages, including the NFL referees', in an 18-month span. Although this was Goodell's first CBA negotiation as commissioner, he was a league lifer who had thrown elbows at the table before and, as commissioner Paul Tagliabue's protégé, had developed a keen sense of the league's business. This was Smith's first. Goodell "grew up in the NFL, he grew up understanding the levers of power," Smith says now. "We weren't equals."

 

The league set a mid-March 2011 CBA deadline, threatening to lock out the players if a deal couldn't be reached. On March 11, inside the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service building in Washington, owners presented a final proposal to players that cut deeply into their share of overall revenue but still increased players' salaries because league revenues had surged. However, in the view of most owners, the league was still handing the players too large a slice of the pie. "It was a very generous deal, which the owners didn't love," a league executive says. Jerry Richardson, the Carolina Panthers' owner at the time, offered to give the union time to debate the offer. The player representatives rejected it out of hand, with Smith in agreement, ensuring a lockout. "De wanted a percentage of the real pie, not a bigger percentage after the owners ate all they could," a union official says.

 

Shortly afterward, owners went upstairs to join a group of team and league executives, who asked what had just happened. It would turn out the deal that the union turned down would have been roughly $1 billion better for the players than the deal they would cut months later, sources say.

 

Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys took the floor: "Look, my daddy grew up on a farm in southwest Missouri. Every so often in the spring, the wind would come from a different part of the country, and the moon would set a different way, and the owls would start f---ing the chickens."

 

Nobody knew where he was going with this story.

 

"The owls are f---ing the chickens," Jones continued. "It makes no sense that they turned this down, but it's a great thing for us."

 

AS THE OWNERS' 132-day lockout of the players stretched the labor uncertainty from late winter into early summer, Smith settled into a dual role: aggressive public critic of Goodell and, inside the negotiations room, a details-focused information-gatherer and fierce advocate for his players. "I thought he did a really good job of exposing faults that the league knew were in the deal but didn't want to admit," says former Indianapolis Colts center Jeff Saturday, at the time a member of the union's executive committee. Too often, though, Smith struggled to get his members onto the same page. It was an old labor story: No matter how many times Smith had implored players to save money, no matter how many lockout contingencies and war chests the union had allocated, labor needed a deal more than management. Smith saw it as his job to get the players, who have short careers and always want to get paid more money now, to understand the long-term stakes and prepare for the worst.

 

It became obvious that owners wanted to expand the regular season. In one contentious meeting, Richardson discussed the owners' desire to add a 17th game -- reminding the room that, under the terms of the 2006 CBA, the league could activate as many as two extra games without union approval.

 

"We're not playing 17 games, Jerry," said executive committee member Domonique Foxworth, who now works for ESPN. "It's not going to happen."

 

Richardson sat straighter in his chair. "We can make you. We don't have to ask you. We're being nice by not saying, 'F--- you, you have to do it.'"

 

"We're being nice by not telling you, 'F--- you, we're not playing,'" Foxworth responded.

 

"We're being nice by not telling you, 'F--- you, we'll play with replacement players,'" Richardson said.

 

"We're being nice by not telling you, 'F--- you, good luck filling up stadiums with Ryan Leaf at quarterback,'" Foxworth replied.

 

It was getting out of hand.

 

"That's a lot of f--- yous!" Smith said, adjourning the room.

 

In July 2011, the lockout ended and, thanks in part to a negotiations room bond of trust formed between Smith and Kraft, a new CBA was completed. Owners were elated that the players' share of revenue was reduced from a high of 57.5% to 47%. Smith gained ground on many key issues, from curbing owners' ability to skim $1 billion of revenue off the top each year, to starting a defined pension plan at a time when many large corporations were doing away with them, to establishing a salary-cap floor -- although some owners now say they were prepared to cede more ground on that issue. As the final touches were being put on the deal, there was a wide-ranging discussion about players who had tested positive for recreational drugs before the lockout and players who were facing suspensions during the lockout. Smith was trying to negotiate a "grace period" for players who might have used drugs during the lockout.

 

Adolpho Birch, then a league executive, stared at the union brass, wondering whether anyone would say something.

 

"Bueller?" Birch said. "Bueller?"

 

Finally, Birch said, "No player could have tested positive during the lockout because we weren't testing players during the lockout."

 

It was an awkward moment at the end of a brutal negotiation. From Smith's perspective, he won in two key areas. One was public and obvious: a reduction in the number of total practices -- and practices in pads -- for the players, though some owners and executives later said the league, hypersensitive to the optics of the head-injury crisis, would have given that up relatively easily anyway. The other union win was quiet and under the radar: Smith persuaded owners to agree to seek union consent for an expanded regular season.

 

But the owners' gains, cemented by the certainty of a 10-year deal, were monumental: a lopsided salary-cap system that rewarded franchise players with generational wealth but squeezed the large middle class of players, and players would continue to work without guaranteed contracts. More importantly, the deal would help the value of team franchises skyrocket further. An adversary of Smith's, former player Sean Gilbert, estimated that $10 billion would be shifted from the players to the owners during the deal's decade. A league executive says now that the 2011 CBA amounted to, in the sports world, "the biggest transfer of wealth of the 21st century."

 

It was exactly what Upshaw had warned of: The league took a short-term hit for a long-term gain.

 

IN NOVEMBER 2011, the union's 11-member executive committee considered a proposal to pay Smith a $1 million bonus for his CBA work. The bonus required a majority vote of the committee, one that wouldn't come easily. Already, Smith's compensation had become a sore spot, for him and the committee. After winning the job, Smith had worked the first few months without a contract before earning $1.61 million his first full year, union documents show, an initial salary that had disappointed him. He had expected a compensation package near the annual $6 million paid to Upshaw. A majority of the executive committee members believed Upshaw was grossly overpaid and granted Smith a package worth far less.

 

Some members, including Scott Fujita and Charlie Batch, were opposed to paying Smith the $1 million bonus, according to executive committees' email exchanges. Led by Fujita, they argued that it should be paid only for "exemplary performance" and that Smith's performance during the CBA had fallen short of that standard. However, Tony Richardson and Drew Brees pushed hard for Smith. Their arguments prevailed -- Brees' endorsement and lobbying helped push it over the line. Asked about whether he was aware of the contentious debate among the reps over his $1 million bonus, Smith now says, "I don't know anything about the vote. I don't get a vote."

 

There are other ways Brees proved to be one of Smith's most vocal and invaluable backers. Publicly, Brees echoed Smith's harsh criticism of Goodell in the media, a powerful player visibly in Smith's corner, especially on high-profile player disciplinary matters. And even on below-the-radar, complicated issues, Brees proved to be an influential union ally. In 2014, the NFLPA asked agents to warn their clients that signing with the Saints could subject them to unfavorable workers' compensation benefits. A Louisiana bill would dramatically limit benefits paid to players hurt outside the regular season. At the urging of Smith and other union officials, Brees and the Saints' players representative publicly denounced the measure that their own team had endorsed. In a statement, Brees declared the legislation "is not good for Saints players, not good for our team or other sports teams in Louisiana and not good for our state." Weeks after Brees publicly opposed the bill, its sponsor pulled the legislation.

 

Some former union executives and executive committee members were well aware of Brees' strong support of Smith when they looked at an entry in the union's own annual reports filed with the U.S. Department of Labor: It appeared that not long after Brees joined the executive committee in 2008, the union had begun paying him enormous sums of money for that work -- more than $2 million some years. And during Brees' seven years on the executive committee, from fiscal years 2009 to 2015, the union paid a total of $9,619,965 to Brees, a company that he owns and to his foundation, according to the union's annual reports filed with the Department of Labor. The NFLPA paid Brees $2,423,504 in 2010, and in 2011, the year of the lockout and the new CBA, a total of $961,532. The payments are in a column denoting Brees' work as an executive committee member, the union records show.

 

The payments to Brees were not hidden -- they were public record -- but a strict reading of the federal paperwork shows they far outpaced those received by any other executive committee members, including Foxworth and Saturday, who in 2010 are listed getting $5,300 and $15,461 respectively, which was primarily reimbursement for expenses. During a budget meeting between union officials and a handful of executive committee members, a few players asked about Brees' $2 million compensation listed under the union's column for executive committee work. They were told the Brees money was from NFL Players Inc., the union marketing arm that pays players for appearances and endorsements, sometimes exceeding seven figures. It was merely an accounting issue, union officials explained.

 

The Players Inc. explanation was viewed skeptically by some union reps and Cyrus Mehri, who in 2017 was preparing to challenge Smith in the union's scheduled election in March 2018. Mehri, a respected civil rights lawyer, had won enormous settlements on behalf of workers against companies such as Texaco and Coca-Cola and helped create the Rooney Rule. Mehri and his team studied the union's public filings and were "stunned" when they saw the Brees payments. "It knocked our socks off," Mehri said. "We checked the Upshaw years and found nothing remotely comparable."

 

ESPN examined the filings and sought opinions from several labor experts and found no evidence of wrongdoing, and found that the paperwork was likely legally completed. No experts wanted to speak publicly about the matter because they didn't want to get embroiled in any dispute, but they said the filings could have more specifically accounted for the Brees payments. The documents include no mention of Players Inc., only payments for "executive committee work." "From a transparency perspective, it's confusing, to say the least," says one veteran labor expert who reviewed the documents.

 

Smith and Atallah say that the vast majority of union money paid to Brees was strictly for Players Inc. duties at the height of his celebrity and earning power. Atallah said Smith doesn't steer Players Inc. money to star players, saying the union has "zero discretion" on how much star players can earn for endorsements and marketing opportunities. And in fact, Smith says, Brees ranked 12th among NFL players in total Players Inc. payments, trailing the total sums earned over the past decade to stars such as Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Tony Romo, usually paid to limited liability corporations connected to the players. Citing confidentiality, the union declined to break down the payments to Brees or any other player, but Atallah calls any suggestion of impropriety "dangerously false." Smith and Atallah say the payments are listed appropriately and prepared by the union's finance department in conjunction with its external auditors. They say that the union has had clean audits for the entirety of Smith's tenure and that they "have never been approached to correct or even clarify any of our filings" with the Department of Labor. "Being a union president or executive committee [member] is a volunteer position," Smith explains. "You get $0 payment, no salary, no stipend. ... So Drew Brees, when he was on the executive committee, happened to be at the height of his marketing powers. ... And therefore his combined equal-share payment, licensing, royalty and appearances fees were in the top 20 in the NFL. .... I mean, it literally is that simple."

 

Brees' agent, Tom Condon, agreed that any question about the payments is "solely a ministerial reporting issue regarding the union's filing with the Department of Labor and where Executive Committee members' Players, Inc. monies are reported on the form and where those same players' ... monies are reported when not on the Executive Committee."

 

A UNION LEADER has a nearly impossible job, trying, despite limited power, to please a spectrum of people and personalities. One of the few ways for Smith to rally the players was to turn Goodell into the enemy. Smith sought out a public platform as a willing and aggressive antagonist of NFL management -- and, in some cases, of his own CBA. Smith seized on two issues: players' health and safety, and Goodell's absolute disciplinary authority. The specter of a looming expanded regular season was very much on Smith's mind, as if he were already drawing battle lines for the next CBA negotiation. "The 18-game season is a perfect example," he told ESPN in early 2013. "It's a revenue-generation idea that benefits the owners on the front end because it creates more revenue. And then it benefits owners on the back end because a longer season means more injuries and fewer of our players would get into a state of vesting where owners would have to pay for their pensions. It is diabolically brilliant. It also happens to be completely inconsistent with health and safety." But Smith had inconsistencies of his own on health and safety. After reducing the players' practice load in the 2011 CBA, Smith offered little initiative on health and safety matters, critics complained. He was content to remain on the sideline and allow the billion-dollar concussion litigation against the league to be led -- and eventually settled -- by plaintiffs' attorneys. But Atallah says, "Our union is as proud of our record on player health and safety as any of our other accomplishments."

 

Smith was far more comfortable relying on a playbook that challenged the league on Article 46 of the CBA, better known as the long-standing rule that granted the commissioner absolute power on disciplinary issues. In a self-proclaimed campaign to "protect the shield," Goodell wielded the power with such ruthlessness that the commissioner's discipline of star players ballooned into cultural touchstones, transcending the sports world. After Goodell handed down the Bountygate punishments against the Saints, Smith declared that "a bounty program never existed" and dismissed as "shoddy" the NFL inquiry that suspended the team's general manager, head coach, two assistants and four players. After the domestic violence suspension of former Baltimore Ravens star Ray Rice, Smith blasted NFL teams for failing to re-sign the running back, saying, "This, unfortunately, is a league that has a history of blackballing players." And during the protracted federal court fight over Brady's four-game Deflategate suspension, Smith said that by failing to grant Brady a fair hearing, Goodell had acted like "a bully" in a league that "has a history of being bullies."

 

Players loved Smith's tough talk, but some saw it as empty, complaining privately that nothing would change as long as Article 46 remained unchanged. Sometimes Smith appeared to be fighting alone. Sometimes he had all of New England or New Orleans behind him. Regardless, Brees always publicly backed up Smith -- and he did it in a fulsome way few, if any, other players did. "I think we would all agree that [Goodell] definitely has too much power," Brees told Sports Illustrated during Deflategate, the type of remark the Saints quarterback made routinely over the years. Goodell, Brees said, "is judge, jury and executioner when it comes to all the discipline. I'm not going to trust any league-led investigation when it comes to anything. It's not transparent."

 

A favorite page of the union playbook began to emerge: Smith would follow his harsh criticism of Goodell with legal action, arguing in court that the absolute authority he had agreed to in 2011 was now unfair and was being abused by Goodell. From disciplinary cases involving players such as Adrian Peterson and Ezekiel Elliott, Smith dispatched high-priced legal teams to challenge Goodell's punishments and power -- but ultimately lost in court nearly every time. Legal costs ran into the tens of millions of dollars, according to NFLPA annual spending reports filed with the Department of Labor. Since Smith became executive director in 2009, the union has paid a total of $79,514,058 in legal expenses, the reports show. And of that amount, the NFLPA spent a total of $55,675,006 representing issues arising directly from disputes related to the CBA, the reports and analysis show. By comparison, Major League Baseball's players' union spent $12.4 million from 2009 to 2016, and the NBA's players' union spent $15.1 million over that seven-year period, both players' unions' financial records show.

 

"We have the largest membership of professional athletes in the country," Smith says. "If you open up any case law book, you'll see that virtually every sports law major case is fought by the NFL Players Association."

 

To union critics, the total spending on fees for outside law firms amounts to a massive, inexplicable waste of money, particularly when considering how often the union loses in court to the NFL. Peter Ginsberg, the lawyer for Rice, said he was stunned to discover that Smith had set up a "parallel investigation" of the running back's suspension proceedings, with so many lawyers present for each meeting that it amounted to overpriced overkill. "De brought on, for no apparent reason, other expensive lawyers to supplement more-than-competent lawyers like [veteran union lawyer] Jeff Kessler," Ginsberg says. A former veteran union official criticized the union's "wasted spending" on legal clashes and Washington lobbying firms. "He's an attorney, he likes chaos," the former official says. "When things are still, he has nothing to do. He needs a fight. He creates battles."

 

League executives also suspect Smith of deploying other tricks of war. Smith would fail to call when he and Goodell had a talk scheduled, the executives say. He then would call Goodell later in the day, when the commissioner was in another meeting and, executives believed, subsequently leak word to the media that Goodell was too busy and not returning his calls, as if to underscore how little the league cared about its players. It's a practice that union officials deny but league executives believe repeatedly occurred, even if they lack proof. Smith became friendly with the league's most influential and powerful owners, such as Jones and Kraft, as a way, he says, to "find out from individual owners what's the motivation behind why talks aren't going well." But he and Goodell, despite multiple similarities in their jobs -- both must try to marshal finicky constituencies despite limited authority -- failed to click. During one meeting in 2014, Smith told Goodell that the union had cut a lucrative deal with the apparel company Fanatics without the NFL's consent "just to see his head explode," Smith later told a confidant.

 

"It was unconventional," a former league executive says. "And exhausting."

 

Even so, most owners couldn't have cared less if Smith irritated league executives. Team valuations spiraled far beyond even the most bullish owner's expectations. From the 2010 to 2019 seasons, for example, the Dallas Cowboys' valuation skyrocketed by $4.5 billion to a league-high $6.4 billion, according to a Sportico report. But over that same period, team salary-cap increases lagged far behind, increasing from $120 million in 2011 to $198.2 million in 2020, though those figures don't include benefits. Team revenues have also outpaced players' salaries; the Cowboys' annual revenues have grown from nearly $500 million in 2011 to $980 million in 2019. The owners and many players knew that the clubs' valuations and revenues gulf kept widening, though Smith's salary has doubled, from $1.6 million his first year to nearly $3.2 million last year. "They're laughing," a veteran agent said of the owners. "How come every franchise's equity value has gone through the roof and the players' salaries haven't followed?" To that criticism, Atallah says, "It's foolish to think the players want the clubs to lose value or revenues, since we share in that growth. If you want to criticize De for doing a deal that allowed owners to make money on the one hand, you have to accept that the deal forced owners to pay out players on the other hand at a record rate."

 

Union officials argued that players' shares of revenue, when including salaries coupled with benefits, have in fact nearly kept pace with the jump in team revenues. But the defeats in court and at the negotiating table had hurt Smith's standing and credibility among some leaders inside the union and among some veterans and Hall of Fame retirees. And with his position up for reelection every three years, some in that influential group began saying perhaps Smith was worth replacing.

 

 

IN MARCH 2015, Smith learned a quick but vital lesson about the fragility of his job security. Eight challengers lined up to stop his reelection bid: three lawyers; two former players; a retired U.S. Navy vice admiral; a sports and entertainment executive; and Jason Belser, a popular union insider working as the NFLPA's senior director of player services and development. To get on the ballot, the NFLPA constitution required a challenger to secure the nominations of at least three team player-representatives. It wasn't lost on Smith and his allies that a vast majority of player reps wanted the election, set in mid-March in Maui, to be a wide-open affair.

 

Over two days of contentious meetings in Maui, the candidates made their presentations to the assembled player reps, challenging Smith on predictable grounds of player health, the CBA and fruitless expensive fights with Goodell. Belser seemed to gain momentum with some player reps -- but he was derailed by Smith loyalists' accusations that he had puffed up his résumé, an accusation Belser denied. Smith's impassioned closing argument won him the required 16 votes of the 31 team reps -- the Buffalo Bills' rep abstained -- and another three-year term. It was hardly an endorsement. "A clown show," a senior union official now calls the two-day session. Privately, Smith's allies vowed it would be the last time an upstart got the chance to come out of nowhere to claim the job, the way Smith had in 2009.

 

Not long after Smith was reelected, union executives and player reps began discussing amending their constitution, changing the rules on how the union hires -- and maintains -- its leader. A year later, in March 2016 at the union's annual Hawaii meeting, the new election procedures were formally considered: They would put the power to offer the executive director a contract extension in the hands of a 14-member selection committee. If the selection committee unanimously agreed, the incumbent would be extended another three years in office without having to run for reelection.

 

The sweeping constitutional change served its intended purpose. Cyrus Mehri, who had garnered the support of more than a dozen Hall of Famers, including Jim Brown, announced he was running for executive director during an August 2017 profile of Smith by HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel." In that piece, Gumbel asked Smith what he liked about the 2011 CBA.

 

"All of it," Smith replied.

 

"I just thought it was a pathetic response," Mehri says now. "It's a combination of arrogance and ignorance to say that."

 

A few days after the HBO broadcast, Mehri met in his Washington office with Charles Mann, who handed Mehri a document. It was the amendment to the NFLPA constitution on elections. A union official had slipped a copy to Mann. "There will never be another open competition for executive director," Mann told Mehri.

 

Everything about the rule change was suspicious to both men, from its merits to the fact that the old election process was still on the NFLPA website 10 months after it had been changed. Union leaders felt that even if the website wasn't updated, the rule wasn't exactly a secret. ESPN had reported on it. Still, the executive committee changed the constitution during the regular season, when players were busy with work. Mann told Mehri that he saw no point in mounting a challenge to Smith, who he said now had the top job "for life."

 

The way Mehri saw it, the constitution change was the continuation of a pattern. "The fix was so in -- it's so rigged," Mehri says now. "They were afraid he could lose; they were afraid of competition."

 

Mehri still tried to get on the ballot by following the union's new rules. After all, he would need to persuade only one of the 14 selection committee members to stop Smith's contract extension and force a vote of all 32 player reps. But Mehri says now that a scheduled dinner meeting in northern New Jersey with two selection committee members, Giants linebacker Zak DeOssie and linebacker/tight end Mark Herzlich, was canceled at the last minute. DeOssie texted Mehri, saying that he had been told by union officials that under the amended constitution, it wouldn't be appropriate to meet with him. Mehri said he also attempted to meet with three other influential player reps on the selection committee -- Ben Watson, Richard Sherman, Lorenzo Alexander -- but none replied to his repeated text messages. "It was a lockdown -- they clearly decided they didn't want to talk with me," Mehri says. "Like anything else, you can control 14 people pretty easily." Mehri considered publicly raising the Brees payments and the election rule change, but he says now that he feared it would hurt not only his candidacy but also the union as it headed into the 2020 CBA negotiations. "It could have been destabilizing, divisive, and presented the grave risk of destroying the union heading into negotiations," he says.

 

Smith, though, dismissed Mehri as one of many outsiders who took shots at him and, Smith says, exaggerated his chances of replacing him. Mehri was "a guy who was, as far as I know, never nominated to run for the job by a player," Smith says. For his part, Atallah says he won't dignify any of Mehri's accusations. One aspect of the amended constitution required the executive director -- in this case, Smith -- to provide the new selection committee with his own report card of his performance, rather than seeking a grade from an independent source. When the union announced in September 2017 that the selection committee had unanimously granted Smith a new three-year contract, Joe Lockhart, then the NFL spokesman, congratulated Smith on Twitter. Lockhart said that the league had "productive" negotiations with Smith in 2011 and looked forward to more of the same in the future. It was a tweak masquerading as a kind gesture. Nobody at the league was disappointed.

 

IN THE RUN-UP to CBA negotiations, Smith visited each team's locker room. The meetings were long, sometimes two or three hours, and often at brutal times -- such as after practice, when tired, distracted players just wanted to go home. Some players complained that Smith is a lawyer who can't understand life in the locker room because he never played pro football; they yearned for a union chief who is a former NFL player. Still, Smith was strong in front of a room, engaging and energetic. He had been in his job longer than nearly all NFL players had been in theirs, and so he was an institutional authority. Executive committee members sometimes wanted Smith to delve deeper into policy details, but he preferred to stay at a 10,000-foot view. Nearly all players were preparing for a labor battle for the first and likely only time of their careers.

 

Smith implored players to save their money in the event of a strike or lockout in 2021. He was preparing for those outcomes himself. The union had amassed a $600 million war chest, a mix of players' dues and withheld revenue from licensing deals -- enough, at the executive board's discretion, to cover all players' salaries and union operating costs during a relatively short work stoppage. "We're sitting on a lot of cash," Smith often told players and others. At one point, he said the league was "desperate" for new revenue; Goodell's oft-stated goal is $25 billion in annual revenues by 2027, a goal within reach when considering the upcoming gigantic increase in TV contracts and multiple new revenue streams from the nationwide push for legalized sports wagering. Smith knew the easiest way to unleash an avalanche of fresh cash was an expanded regular season and playoffs. Behind the scenes, he floated his own plan: shorten the regular season from 16 games to 14 and add four wild-card teams. "A Super Playoff System," Smith called it. He had privately pitched the idea to Kraft and Jones, among others, but the owners were never going to contract the regular season.

 

Problem was, once the union decided to hear out the league on a nonnegotiable expanded regular season, the owners had the upper hand. Smith countered the league's 17-game proposal by seeking a larger share of total revenue, up from 47% to 50% -- a longtime goal of the players. The league replied with an increase of the union's percentage to 48% -- but with more work.

 

"That 48% was tied to a 17th game," Smith told players.

 

There were two catches, Smith explained. One was that each player wouldn't be compensated a regular game check for the extra work; an estimated $250 million would be split among 32 clubs. "That 250," Smith said during his autumn 2019 locker room tour, narrowing a gap between his hands, "gets small. So the question is: Does all that extra work, all-inclusive, make sense for the economic payoff?"

 

The other was that a 17th game was only the beginning. "But, oh, there is more!" union executive Don Davis told players at one point, describing the league's proposal. "We're gonna give you 1% more, we're gonna have you play an additional game, but we also want the right to play an 18th game whenever we so choose."

 

None of these outcomes appealed to many players. Smith was back to facing the same issue he had in 2011. The league wanted unilateral rights to expand the season, leaving Smith to characterize, and perhaps redefine, what a win would be for the union.

 

BY LATE WINTER of 2019, an offensive tackle named Russell Okung had grown dismayed with the process of planning for CBA negotiations -- and with Smith. As a Los Angeles Charger, he had run for the executive committee in March 2018 on a platform of "transparency and communication." But Okung quickly became disenchanted by the union's leadership on a host of issues, ranging from Smith's tepid support for Colin Kaepernick's collusion lawsuit against the NFL to the goals and tenor of CBA negotiations to procedural practices. Article V, Section 5.14 of the union constitution required adherence to the parliamentary procedures known as Robert's Rules of Order, including a longtime union practice of keeping the minutes of meetings. But executives didn't enforce the rules, citing a need for confidentiality. "It felt deliberate" to keep people in the dark, Okung says.

 

A year of tension came to a breaking point in early 2019, when union leadership and various players met in Key Biscayne, Florida. On March 11, former Chiefs linebacker Andy Studebaker hosted a two-hour breakout session for 33 players, including Okung. Studebaker, one of the union's player directors, stood near a 2-by-3-foot flip chart and wrote union negotiation CBA priorities as the room suggested them. Okung offered what he felt were creative ideas to pursue in the next CBA, including 50% guaranteed contracts, lifetime benefits and shortening rookie contracts from four years to two years. But he had a premonition that the priorities listed in the meeting ultimately wouldn't be passed up the chain to Smith.

 

Okung took out his phone and pressed an app that recorded audio.

 

Two months later, on May 14, Studebaker held a meeting at the Chargers' facility in Costa Mesa, Calif., with most of the team in attendance. Studebaker listed union priorities. Okung was furious. None of the ideas he had raised were included. He asked Studebaker where the ideas had come from.

 

The breakout meeting, Studebaker replied.

 

Studebaker tried to continue, but Okung cut him off. "Where the f--- are the things on the list?"

 

Studebaker replied that he had presented the same priorities to other teams. Nobody had objected.

 

"That's not the complete list!" Okung said, holding up his phone. "Guys, I have the complete list. ... I have the list because I recorded the meeting." Most people in the room were stunned. At 12:36 p.m. that day, Davis texted Smith and other union executives: "RO just told the LAC that he recorded the breakout meeting!"

 

Union leadership was fed up with Okung. The union commissioned an investigation into Okung by Winston & Strawn's David Greenspan, a respected lawyer who had served on Kaepernick's legal team. Greenspan's report was issued on June 27, under a banner that read "Privileged & Confidential." The report called Okung's recording not only a "breach of confidentiality" but also an expression of "defiance" and concluded that Okung had violated the union constitution. Greenspan cited a membership vote that prohibited secret recordings and superseded Robert's Rules of Order, hinting that by failing to disclose to the room that he was recording the meeting, Okung also had "potentially" broken Florida's Security of Communication Act, a third-degree felony. Okung considered the investigation a blatant attempt to silence him. Echoing a charge Smith often levels against the NFL, Okung questioned the inquiry's fairness and independence, owing to the fact that the union had paid Winston & Strawn $3,120,395 in fees in 2018 -- among the highest amounts sports unions paid to one law firm in a single year. Most of all, Okung felt he had been threatened with criminal prosecution and union sanctions for upholding his fiduciary duties -- a topic on which he declined to comment.

 

Smith didn't want disciplinary action taken against Okung. But a clear message was sent to the membership that dissenters would be targeted. Okung would try to defend himself in March 2020, days after it was announced he had been traded to the Carolina Panthers. Twice, he filed charges of unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board. He singled out Smith, accusing him of "subverting" the NFLPA constitution and citing a litany of alleged protocol violations, from excluding Okung and other executive committee members from negotiations to "threatening and chilling Mr. Okung and his right to speak." And twice, the NLRB rejected Okung's charges.

 

But by then, it was all but too late. Smith had secured the votes to pass the CBA -- barely.

 

A CHAOTIC CBA vote followed another chaotic CBA negotiation. Owners deployed various tactics. John Mara of the Giants pleaded with the players to understand that owners weren't making nearly as much money as the players had suspected. (Teams' books are private, except for the publicly owned Green Bay Packers, whose books show 2019 revenue of $506.9 million and $400 million in the bank.) Kraft reminded the union that both sides benefited from long-term labor harmony. On Feb. 20 of last year -- after details of a proposed 10-year agreement, including a 17th game and an expanded playoff format, had been leaked to the media, which quoted league and union executives calling it "transformative" -- owners approved the new deal.

 

The idea of more football was catnip to fans. Smith knew this, often telling friends with a laugh, "A football fan is like a crack addict who will never quit his habit." And some players and agents opposed to the CBA viewed the avalanche of positive media coverage about an expanded season as a flagrant attempt to jam them. Surprisingly, though, it wasn't only management backing them into a corner. It was also, some players and agents suspected, De Smith. Some team reps and star players were furious that the 17th game had become the starting point for negotiations. They also felt that the owners had not given them nearly enough in exchange for the extra workload and that the public momentum quickly pushing a unionwide vote in March benefited the owners far more than them.

 

The day after the owners' near-unanimous approval, the union's executive committee rejected the deal by a 6-5 vote, primarily because of opposition to the 17th game. Union officials were surprised that it was rejected, though they say the vote was advisory and symbolic. Later that day, the NFLPA board of representatives -- 32 team representatives -- postponed a vote. Owners were stunned. "We had been working off 17 games since August," one owner says. "They agreed to the 17th game." On Feb. 25, executive committee member Lorenzo Alexander changed his support from a "yes" to a "no," upping the total of executive committee members against the deal to seven. On Twitter, a flood of superstars -- Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, J.J. Watt, Todd Gurley -- voiced strong opposition, arguing against the expanded season and the 10-year length of the new deal. It was a disaster for Smith.

 

An owner who is close to Smith says now that "De didn't do anything to communicate" with the players. But on his desk, Smith has a binder as thick as an offensive playbook filled with every Slack conversation with player reps and others during the monthslong negotiations, though he declined to share its contents. Every player had had a copy of the league's proposal, including the 17th game, since August 2019. The added game was part of Smith's fall speech to teams, though in those stump speeches, some players ended up recalling their leader's tough talk more than the fine-print details. "I know what the facts are," Smith says.

 

As if in concert, league and union executives seemed to clash with the game's superstars, emphasizing through favored media channels the ways they said most players would benefit from the proposal. "This is upper-class players holding out to the detriment of the rank-and-file," one owner said at the time. The owners' strategy of pitting players against one another proved successful, as lower-paid players far outnumber the high-earners. "Management is trying to drive a rift between us," Okung told his fellow player reps.

 

By then, some owners were saying they were over the union and Smith. And not every owner felt the CBA was as good for them as it might have been. "Some feel like we're giving up too much for certainty," one owner said then. The players' board of representatives voted 17-14 in favor of the deal, with one representative abstaining -- four votes shy of the two-thirds majority required by the union constitution to send an amended CBA to a full player vote. A deal suddenly seemed dead. Owners made it clear that this would be their last, best offer. Union leadership pushed to move the CBA to a full vote of all union members despite lacking the support of the executive committee or a two-thirds majority of player reps. After consulting outside labor counsel, Smith concluded that despite some lawyers' reading of the vaguely worded constitution, all players could still vote on the full CBA despite the board's failing to pass it by a two-thirds majority because it was considered by the union to be a new CBA. Okung disagreed with that conclusion and immediately filed an unsuccessful Unfair Labor Practices charge with the NLRB.

 

Then, just as all NFL players began a weeklong voting process, the world stopped. On March 11, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Lockdowns ensued, and the sports world halted. But during the NFL offseason, business continued. Free agency loomed. Management and union officials reminded players that a recession might be on the horizon, which could impact the upcoming broadcast rights negotiations. On March 15, with practice-squad players casting their votes, the new CBA was passed, 1,019 to 959 -- a razor-thin, 60-vote difference. "Can't believe we agreed to that lol," then-Colts tight end Eric Ebron tweeted. "We can only play this game for so long and y'all didn't want everything we could get out of it? .... 2030 y'all do better." Nearly 500 union members didn't even bother to vote. And among those who did vote, some players had instant buyers' remorse and asked if their vote could be changed. The union said no. Smith had won -- and his victory would hold up against legal challenges from Okung and Panthers safety Eric Reid, who was cut shortly after that and did not play during the 2020 season.

 

Reviews of Smith's performance on the new CBA were mixed. Joe Banner, a former executive with the Eagles and Browns who helped negotiate the 2011 deal, felt Smith had done a good job, raising the split of revenue players received from 47% to 48.5% with the 17th game approved. But Andrew Brandt, a former Packers executive and agent, said Smith should have extracted more for the 17th game, considering the enormous boon to the league and its broadcast partners. Brad Sohn, a plaintiffs attorney on the head-injury lawsuit against the league, said the new deal "puts accountability for numerous health and safety issues on life support."

 

"I wasn't real, real happy about the way things went down," said Aaron Rodgers, who bailed on being the Packers' player rep in November.

 

Smith privately conceded that some of his critics were correct but also felt he had pulled off a feat of negotiating by extracting concessions for an expanded season the league had sought for more than a decade -- not to mention long-term security at a time of economic calamity. He might not have prevented an expanded regular season, but he did limit it, preventing the league from increasing beyond 17 games without union consent. "I'm proud of all of it," he says now.

 

As the CBA was being voted on, though, Smith was already looking beyond it. On the Friday before the deal passed, Smith ordered a book on the 1918 flu pandemic, "The Great Influenza." It arrived Monday. He finished it in 72 hours -- and formed a COVID-19 committee as he read. "I was terrified," he says now.

 

THIS SUMMER, FOR the second time in less than a year, some players believed Smith had leverage over the league. An estimated $9 billion was on the line if the NFL had to cancel its season due to COVID-19. If it played games in empty and nearly empty stadiums, the league was looking at a $4 billion to $5 billion drop in revenues, which would impact the salary-cap formula -- and, perhaps, the negotiations for lucrative new broadcast deals. Once again, the league and the union were at the negotiating table, this time virtually. In Zoom sessions, the league proposed taking a 35% escrow out of players' salaries to help manage costs. The union laughed. There was concern within the union that the league would pull the deal it had just ratified, cancel the season and return to negotiations in 2021 with players out of work for a year and in a weaker position. But the toughest issue ended up being the salary cap, which is based on league revenues. The league preferred to incur a one-time cap drop from $198.2 million this year to no lower than $180 million in 2021, and then have the cap rebound to $200 million or a bit more in 2022. Many players wanted to spread out the losses over more than two years, keeping the cap -- and spending on player salaries -- higher now.

 

The cap was one of many topics on July 17, when owners and top league executives convened for a videoconference to discuss confidential plans for the season. Only one representative per club was allowed. Goodell made it clear he wanted to find a safe way to play through the pandemic. Goodell, chief medical officer Allen Sills and general counsel Jeff Pash did most of the talking. Goodell called the situation "volatile" and implored owners to not fight with governors who wanted few or no fans at games.

 

"Don't force it," Goodell said.

 

Goodell was steadfast in his belief that the league had proper health protocols and a solid salary-cap plan, even if the details had yet to be finalized with the union. Some owners felt Smith had lost many of his players and held less power than he did in March. Mentions of the union mostly centered on a plea for nobody to leak details of the call -- "We'll lose leverage," one owner said -- and a brief discussion about Smith's insistence on daily testing for the players. The league was lukewarm on daily testing, citing COVID-19's minimum 24- to 48-hour incubation period, and preferred to test every other day. League executives seemed frustrated that union talking points included both a concern about taxing the general public's coronavirus testing resources and an insistence on daily tests. But it was a minor issue: In the coming weeks, the league would agree to daily testing, handing Smith a talking-point win.

 

Toward the end of the call, everyone seemed exhausted -- by the stress of the pandemic, a long year of negotiating with the union and never-ending videoconferences. But first, Vikings owner Zygi Wilf wanted to speak. "So, we're opening?" he said.

 

"We plan on opening," Goodell replied, slightly perplexed by the question.

 

"Should we do another one of these calls when things are agreed to?" Wilf asked, referring to the union.

 

"Sure," Goodell said, sounding tired.

 

Jones then unmuted from his $250 million superyacht, anchored off the Washington state coast, and argued that the league needed to be declarative that the season was starting on time: "Our body language needs to reflect confidence."

 

"Well said, Jerry," Goodell said.

 

The message was clear: The NFL was going to start the 2020 season on time and had every intention of playing every game through the pandemic. The union had to get on board. A week after the call, both sides amended the new CBA and agreed to a salary-cap structure. Although Smith felt he had won concessions -- the revenue losses would be spread out over four years rather than two -- many team cap specialists felt the league had won, again. If there had been a flat salary cap for three or four years, teams wouldn't pay big money for free agents. Smith and union executives argued that even with a one-year hit, smart teams would be able to pay big salaries to stars and keep younger players happy with the bump in pay from the new CBA. The middle class of players would be squeezed -- for the second time in Smith's tenure. It was the most recent reminder not only that the NFL is still an owner's league but that playing in the most popular sport doesn't guarantee being represented by the most powerful union.

 

ON AN OCTOBER day, De Smith sits at his desk, looking on Zoom like a man who might not have won all of the time but who had certainly survived. It's been a marathon session of discussing his record, in a long year of brutal negotiations, in a long stretch of trying to keep his family, staff, and players safe. Within days, former players Don Majkowski and Aveion Cason would amend an ongoing lawsuit against the league and union, claiming that protections for retired players were illegally stripped from the CBA -- and asserting that the deal should be invalidated and voted on again. There are rumors in ownership circles that Smith is angling for a way out, ready to hit the speaker circuit or write a book or do anything but trade barbs with billionaires and endure arrows from members of his own ranks. But when he's asked about it, Smith speaks in the language of many Americans in the midst of a global pandemic and economic recovery: He's just grateful to have a job. The past year has clarified many things for Smith. He says he's proud of the union's record on diversity, proud that the revenue from Players Inc. has doubled during his tenure, proud to partner with Harvard on health and safety initiatives -- and proud of his fighting. Indeed, the aspect of his job that you'd think would wear on him most has had the reverse effect.

 

"I like the combat," he says. "It's not for everybody."

 

But the combat faded as the season went on, replaced by something resembling a partnership. On Super Bowl Sunday, Smith was standing with Goodell on the field before kickoff, chatting behind masks, the second time in a few days that they appeared together publicly. On the Thursday before the game, Smith joined Goodell on stage for a news conference, and after it concluded, the two men kept talking and laughing. Aides told them it was time to go, but they continued their chat, in no rush to leave each other's company. The union posted a photo -- "Took a global pandemic to bring them 6 feet apart," Atallah wrote on Twitter -- and the league tweeted out another one on Super Bowl Sunday, lauding the "unprecedented collaboration" over this past year.

 

Once again, the league had taken a short-term hit for a long-term gain, just as Upshaw had warned. His words are now laminated and in a display case in the lobby of the union's office building. Smith walks by them each day on the way to his office, a reminder of the stakes. He has taken a short-term hit, too -- with uncertain gains. But two things are clear: The league has not broken the union, and De Smith still has a job.

 

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/30930834/inside-dual-legacies-nfl-players-union-boss-demaurice-smith

[Patrick Bateman 3903]

 

[Machinator 32097]

 

[Machinator 32097]

This Russell Wilson business is getting real.

https://theathletic.com/2409212/2021/02/25/russell-wilson-trade-seahawks/

Spoiler

Days before a critical home game against the Cardinals, Russell Wilson met with members of the Seahawks’ coaching staff. It was a time of high tension. In Seattle’s previous two games, Wilson had turned the ball over seven times, and the Seahawks had lost both, first to the Bills, then to the Rams. The offense needed to get on track, and Wilson had ideas on how to make that happen.

Instead, the meeting would come to symbolize the divide between Wilson and the organization.

Pete Carroll has built Hall of Fame credentials on what he sees as simple truths about how the game is best played: Run the ball, avoid turnovers, explode in the passing game. “It is not because we just want to knock our head against a wall,” Carroll once explained. “It is because the game is played well when you don’t give the other team the football. The game is played well when you can convert and make first downs. The game is played well when you can explode on offense.”

Carroll believes that formula in his bones, and over and over again he has won while implementing it. In contrast, Wilson believes that Carroll’s conservative philosophy is limiting his production and, by extension, his ambitions to be one of the game’s all-time greats.

But in the first half of the 2020 season — and in a stark break from years past — Seattle unleashed an all-out aerial attack. Throwing the ball early and often, Wilson put together the best statistical stretch of his career and emerged as the clear front-runner for MVP, an award he covets for the implications it would have on his legacy.

“I’m trying to break away, you know what I mean?” Wilson said at one point early in the season, then named the shadows he was chasing: Brady, Brees, Manning, Montana.

The wheels to Wilson’s MVP campaign rattled loose in a 44-34 loss to the Bills on Nov. 8. Wilson turned the ball over four times, the defense cratered, and Carroll sounded shell-shocked at what he had just watched. “I don’t recognize that game,” he said. “It’s a game that I don’t have any place in my brain for.” It was an uncharacteristic performance from Wilson — and an unacceptable one for Carroll, who dedicates a whole day of practice (Thursday) to turnovers.

In response, he pulled back the reins on Wilson and the offense. Statistically, it wasn’t a seismic shift. Through the first eight games, Seattle led the league on the Cook Index — which measures how frequently teams pass on early downs in the first 28 minutes, before time and score influence play-calling — and ranked seventh thereafter. But it was effectively a rebuke of Wilson, and sources close to the quarterback said it upset him.

A week later, Wilson had his worst game of the season, turning the ball over three more times in an ugly 23-16 loss to the Rams. Wilson appeared almost rattled, and longtime NFL writers Charean Williams and Mike Jones both wrote that the game scuttled Wilson’s MVP hopes. In the locker room afterward, Carroll delivered a harsher-than-usual message about accountability to the entire team and coaching staff. “We got to get our act together,” he told the media while restating the importance of a balanced offense that takes care of the ball. Meanwhile, Wilson reaffirmed his self-belief. “I know that I’m a great football player,” he said. “I know I’ve been great, I know I will be great, and I know I’ll continue to be great.”

Carroll wanted to be more careful with the offense; Wilson wanted to stay the course, trusting in himself.

Before the Thursday night game against Arizona, Wilson met with his coaches. For some time, Wilson has sought — even pushed — for influence within the organization regarding scheme and personnel. In the meeting, he outlined his own ideas for how to fix the offense. His suggestions were dismissed, multiple sources told The Athletic  — another reminder to Wilson that the Seahawks did not see him the same way he saw himself, as a player who had earned greater control over his situation, his future, his legacy.

He stormed out of the room.

The Super Bowl this year was a trigger. Wilson flew to Tampa to pick up his Walter Payton Man of the Year award. He and his wife, Ciara, watched the game in a suite next to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, and as Tom Brady battled Patrick Mahomes on the field below, Wilson seethed. During the game, he texted Jake Heaps, his former teammate and private quarterback coach, to vent about watching the game instead of playing in it.

Wilson later spoke with Carroll, according to a source, to talk about the way the Seahawks addressed the offensive line, an issue that had bothered Wilson for years. He wanted to know the team’s plan, but it wasn’t relayed to him, at least not to Wilson’s satisfaction, the source said. Carroll implored him to have faith.

But after the Super Bowl, Wilson took his message public.

That Monday, CBS’ Jason La Canfora tweeted that “Russell Wilson’s camp” was frustrated with his pass protection and called it “a situation worth monitoring.” The next day, Wilson went on “The Dan Patrick Show” and said he wanted to be more involved with the organization. He was asked about the almost 400 times he has been sacked over his nine-year career: “That’s a big thing that we gotta fix, that’s gotta be fixed.” He brought up Brady, a player whose status he craves, and the play of Tampa Bay’s offensive line in the Super Bowl: “He wasn’t touched really.” Several times he mentioned his “legacy,” as well as his goal to play 10 to 15 more years, just like Brady.

On a Zoom call with Seattle reporters that same day, Wilson was asked if he was frustrated with the Seahawks. “I’m frustrated with getting hit too much,” he said. Ex-Seahawk Brandon Marshall said Wilson was “beyond frustrated” with the team and added that Wilson “is trying to figure out how to move on in a classy way.” Patrick echoed the QB’s desire for urgency and, citing a source, said the “current situation is unsustainable.” By then, La Canfora had even listed possible trade destinations for Wilson: the Raiders, Dolphins, Saints and Jets among them.

Growing up, Wilson’s idols were Derek Jeter and Drew Brees, an interesting contrast. Brees won only one Super Bowl in 20 seasons — and never won an MVP — but he overcame physical limitations to put up record-breaking stats. Jeter racked up World Series titles and clutch plays, his legacy defined by winning. A decade into his career, Wilson hasn’t won like Jeter, and he hasn’t put up numbers like Brees. Wilson and the people around him believe the Seahawks are partly responsible.

“The reason that we’re here is because he’s on pace to be the most sacked quarterback in the history of the NFL,” said Robert Turbin, Wilson’s former teammate and a groomsman at his wedding.

Others see the situation differently after Wilson had the worst stretch of his career in the season’s final eight games, ranking 28th in yards per attempt, one spot below the Cincinnati Bengals’ Brandon Allen.

“He’s finally catching heat,” one person told The Athletic. “That’s the main reason for all of this. … People are talking and holding him accountable because he’s one of the highest-paid quarterbacks, he says he wants to be the greatest, so now people are holding him to that standard.”

“It’s a PR game,” that person added. “He’s trying to protect himself.”

Another source agreed: “What he’s trying to do is save face.”

Wilson and Carroll have won at least nine games in each of nine seasons together. They have made the playoffs every season but one, won a Super Bowl and lost another. But the Seahawks haven’t reached the NFC Championship game since 2014, and Wilson’s frustration has escalated to the point that his camp has broached potential trade destinations with the Seahawks. According to sources, those teams include ones mentioned in La Canfora’s column the day of the Super Bowl: the Dolphins, Jets, Saints and Raiders. Some people around the league think a trade could happen, if not this offseason then sometime in the near future.

“It’s a great story,” a coach from another team said. “There is a lot there — money, greed, power and control.”

In March 2018, much of the NFL world gathered at the University of Wyoming for Josh Allen’s pro day. Reps from teams without established quarterbacks filled the indoor fieldhouse to watch Allen, a potential top-10 pick. The Giants sent coach Pat Shurmur. The Broncos sent personnel analyst Gary Kubiak. The Browns sent general manager John Dorsey and seven others from the organization.

And then there was Seahawks general manager John Schneider, whose team held the 18th pick and already had Wilson, a two-time Super Bowl quarterback who had just led the league in touchdown passes. For Schneider, it was simply due diligence, no different from Packers coach Mike McCarthy attending Sam Bradford’s pro day while Aaron Rodgers was entering his prime. Schneider had been with the Packers front office when Brett Favre was still their starter and Rodgers had unexpectedly fell in the first round, a lesson that stuck with him.

“The most important people in the building,” Schneider told reporters after the Wyoming visit, “are the head coach and the quarterback.”

From day one, Carroll and Schneider said they would have no sacred cows. They would be involved in every deal, scout every player. They signed free-agent quarterback Matt Flynn to a $26 million deal in the 2012 offseason and then, 40 days later, drafted Wilson in the third round and started him Week 1.

A year before the Allen draft, the Seahawks had fallen in love with Patrick Mahomes and, according to sources at the time, were prepared to select him late in the first round if the future league MVP was still on the board. Schneider felt the same way about Mahomes coming out of college as he’d felt about Wilson, sources said, and there was no way he could pass him up.

Wilson’s camp saw the Seahawks’ interest in Allen as an unwelcome surprise. Amid significant roster turnover — veterans Richard Sherman, Jimmy Graham, Michael Bennett, Cliff Avril and Kam Chancellor were either gone or on their way out — reports surfaced that Mark Rodgers, Wilson’s agent, called Schneider for clarification on the quarterback’s status. Jim Trotter of the NFL Network wondered if Wilson might “push the button to move on” if the 2018 season didn’t go well. Around the same time, La Canfora wondered if Wilson might be “contemplating his football mortality with the offensive line still a significant concern.”

The offensive line had become Wilson’s biggest grievance, but from a Seahawks perspective, funneling resources toward re-signing Chancellor, Sherman, Bennett, Earl Thomas, Bobby Wagner, K.J. Wright and Marshawn Lynch had made more sense than prioritizing offensive linemen Russell Okung, James Carpenter, J.R. Sweezy, Breno Giacomini and others who signed multiyear deals elsewhere.

Wilson’s own contract played a role in the tradeoff. The Seahawks spent heavily on the offensive line during Wilson’s first three years, when the quarterback was on his rookie contract. But that changed after Wilson signed a massive extension before the 2015 season. With his new contract consuming more than 15 percent of the cap, up from less than 1 percent previously, the Seahawks dropped from the top 10 in cap spending for the offensive line to the bottom five.

From Wilson’s standpoint, the offensive line wasn’t good enough, period.

In 2015, he threw for a then-career-high 34 touchdowns against eight interceptions while playing behind a bottom-five offensive line. The 2016 season — when Wilson suffered leg injuries early in the year but started every game behind Pro Football Focus’ last-ranked pass-blocking line — was much of the same. Wilson hired a nutritionist after the season to trim weight and re-tool his body. He figured if he was going to take a beating, he needed to be prepared.

Lacking a consistent run game in 2017, Wilson accounted for 37 of Seattle’s 38 touchdowns, led the team in the rushing, led the league in passing TDs and returned to the Pro Bowl — all while again playing behind one of the league’s lowest-graded offensive lines. But the Seahawks thought Wilson was also part of the problem. At halftime of the final game, with a playoff berth on the line and the Seahawks down 20-7, Carroll sat at Wilson’s locker. The offense was struggling, Wilson was scrambling all over the place, and he missed reads because of how he handled the pressure. A major criticism from Seahawks players over the years is that Carroll has been too gentle with Wilson. But in the locker room Carroll said he spoke to Wilson critically and urgently “in a way that he hasn’t heard me talk to him.”

“Fix it,” Carroll told him.

Wilson did, but Seattle still lost, finishing the year 9-7 and missing the playoffs for the only time in Wilson’s nine seasons.

Carroll said Wilson had a “fantastic” year but added “he can be better.” The coach then jumped in front of any judgments about his willingness to speak harsh truths about his quarterback. “Russ wants to be criticized,” Carroll said. “Russ needs to be criticized. He wants to be great.”

One week later, Carroll fired his offensive coordinator of seven seasons, Darrell Bevell, and reassigned Carl Smith, the team’s longtime quarterback coach. When Carroll hired Brian Schottenheimer to replace Bevell, he emphasized that the staff changes were made in hopes of “challenging” Wilson “like he’s never been challenged before.”

Meanwhile, word reached those around Wilson that the Seahawks and Browns had discussed a possible trade involving Wilson and Cleveland’s No. 1 overall pick in the 2018 draft — another surprise that led Wilson to secure a no-trade clause in his next contract.

If the 2018 offseason was when Wilson felt the Seahawks cast doubt on his future in Seattle, the quarterback and his camp turned the tables in the spring of the following year. Ahead of Wilson’s second tense contract negotiation with the Seahawks, another round of rumors popped up about his future and whether he wanted to be in Seattle at all.

Roughly two weeks after Seattle’s frustrating 24-22 loss to Dallas in the 2019 wild-card round, Wilson and Ciara signed with talent-management monolith Creative Artist Agency (CAA) to help the couple with their interests in the entertainment industry. CAA represents hundreds of athletes and entertainers, so the messaging could have been coincidental, but not long after Wilson signed on with the agency, word suggesting he could possibly leave Seattle for the New York Giants filtered through CAA clients. Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd cited a rumor from the “entertainment agent world” that Ciara would prefer to live in New York to further her music career. Cowherd implied such a move would benefit Wilson’s status as well. NFL safety Tyrann Mathieu tweeted, “Russ wants New York. But you ain’t heard that from T.” Asked about the rumor on “The Tonight Show” — hosted by Jimmy Fallon, who along with Cowherd and Mathieu are CAA clients — Wilson laughed it off.

“I’m not sure if the Seahawks are going to let me get away,” Wilson said. “I love Seattle. Seattle is a special place.”

A few weeks after his appearance on “The Tonight Show,” Wilson gave the team a hard deadline: The two sides had until midnight on April 15 to agree to an extension, or else Wilson would play out his deal and test the market. On the day of the deadline, after reports suggested a deal would not get done, Wilson and the Seahawks agreed to a four-year, $140 million extension, the richest contract in league history. Wilson wore a Sonics jacket to his news conference and made clear what sealed the deal for him: a no-trade clause requiring the Seahawks to secure his blessing before sending him anywhere else. Wilson held as much power as at any point of his career — and he wanted Carroll to open up the offense.

In 2018, the Seahawks had run the ball more frequently than any team since Tim Tebow’s Broncos. That changed some in 2019, but Carroll’s reluctance to turn his quarterback loose early in games remained a lingering frustration for Wilson.

It wasn’t personal from Carroll’s standpoint. Carroll took special pride in the Seahawks at one point going 95 consecutive games without losing by 10 or more points, the longest streak in league history by 21 games. That cannot happen, Carroll believes, without risk avoidance.

Wilson believes otherwise. If the Seahawks were more aggressive, they could score more points early, freeing him up from having to play Superman so frequently in the fourth quarter. It happened again in the divisional round of the 2019 playoffs, when Seattle fell behind, 21-3, in Green Bay. Wilson rallied the team in the fourth quarter, but the Seahawks still lost to the Packers, 28-23.

The defeat seemed to harden Wilson’s stance. He spent part of last offseason lobbying for a more aggressive approach, according to a person familiar with the situation. Carroll pushed back. Wilson kept pleading his case, going so far as to offer his input on personnel decisions, and sources said Wilson and other team leaders have indeed been consulted before the team made high-profile acquisitions such as Jamal Adams, Jadeveon Clowney, Duane Brown, Jimmy Graham, Quandre Diggs, Greg Olsen and Josh Gordon.

At last year’s Pro Bowl, Wilson was asked if Seattle had enough talent to contend for championships. It was a question he once might have brushed off; this time, he said no. Wilson said he wanted superstars on defense, more pieces on offense and young stars in the draft. In a separate interview at the Super Bowl that year, he went on the offensive again, saying Seattle needed more of an up-tempo, attacking offense. He lobbied for the “freedom” to go out and score as many points as possible.

“That’s kind of what the Chiefs do,” Wilson said, before adding: “We’re going to try and figure that out and see if we can get back here. Quickly.”

The 2020 season was the turning point — or, maybe, the breaking point. The offense started on a historic pace, putting Wilson in the Hall of Fame company he so badly wants to keep.

Seattle averaged a league-leading 4.5 offensive touchdowns per game through the season’s first half, a pace exceeded since 2000 by only three teams: Peyton Manning’s 2013 Denver Broncos, Tom Brady’s 2007 New England Patriots and Kurt Warner’s 2000 St. Louis Rams — historically great offenses led by quarterbacks who won MVPs in each of those seasons.

The best stretch of Wilson’s career had come after Carroll agreed to “Let Russ Cook.” Wilson welcomed the shift so much he filed a trademark application for the phrase — a fan slogan that had implored the Seahawks to turn the offense over to their $35 million-a-year quarterback — with the intention of selling cookware and utensils to benefit charity. But the offense never quite felt like that of a Carroll-coached team, and it didn’t go unnoticed by those close to Wilson that the coach only rarely mentioned “Seahawk football,” as he tends to do when the formula is pounding the ball and playing elite defense.

Facing better defenses in the second half of the schedule, Wilson and the offense bogged down. Seattle averaged only 2.4 offensive touchdowns per game, 18th in the league and six spots below the Mitch Trubisky-led Chicago Bears. It wasn’t only because Carroll passed less frequently on early downs. Something wasn’t right. Wilson wasn’t right.

During a 17-12 loss to the Colt McCoy-led Giants in early December, a game in which the offense scored only 10 points, Wilson dropped back and set up in a clean pocket. He held the ball longer than four seconds and had plenty of space around him, only to take a sack, a play indicative of Wilson’s struggles down the stretch.

“What the fuck is wrong with Russell Wilson?” a veteran coach who watched the game said at the time. “He is seeing ghosts. They act like they are not protecting him, but he kills the protection. There are times they got a clean pocket, he runs up in there, he just panics. He is not playing very good at all.”

“People say their protection is not that good,” the coach went on. “That whole ‘Let Russ Cook’ thing, he is better when they can run the ball and they play off that, there is no question. No one likes that because they want him to be Dan Marino. Well, he is not Dan Marino. You are who you are. But he looks bad right now.”

There were other issues this season, too. Those close to Wilson feel as though the pillars upon which Carroll has built his program — namely competition and accountability — are applied only selectively, especially as it pertains to the coach and his sons. This past season, receivers coach Nate Carroll, who has worked under his father since 2010, briefly stepped away from the job in frustration over his role before returning to the team, sources told The Athletic. Nate made his unhappiness known to players, sources said. For Wilson and those around him, the disruption validated a long-held complaint: Carroll, and by extension his sons, answer to no one.

When asked last month who in the building can tell him harsh and uncomfortable truths, Carroll named former assistant Carl (Tater) Smith, John Schneider and his two sons, Brennan and Nate. Smith left the Seahawks before the 2019 season, and Brennan Carroll left after the 2020 season to coach in college. Only Nate Carroll remains.

“Over the years I have lost a couple guys,” Carroll said. “Tater would tell me anything. He was awesome. I demanded it of him because he knew the truth and he needed to speak to me. I have lost a few guys like that. It is something I’m looking at.”

As Wilson seeks to hold Carroll and the organization accountable, others question whether anyone can do the same for the quarterback himself. That has been a sensitive subject ever since Sports Illustrated and ESPN published stories years ago suggesting Carroll coddled Wilson to the detriment of the team. After Richard Sherman picked off Wilson in a June 2014 practice, then yelled at the young quarterback and threw the ball at him, Carroll met with team leaders and told them to take it easier on Wilson. Carroll, multiple sources said, protected and enabled Wilson, undermining the two words he had built his whole program on: Always compete.

This current situation with Wilson, several sources believe, is the inevitable consequence of that special treatment.

The 2020 season ended with another early playoff loss, this time to the Rams in the wild-card round. Wilson threw a pick-six in the first half, and his offensive line had one of its worst performances of the year. The game was a Rorschach test: Was Carroll to blame? Was Wilson?

After the loss, Carroll fired Schottenheimer, the offensive coordinator he had brought in to challenge Wilson. Wilson wanted to be involved in the process to hire Schottenheimer’s replacement, and he was, meeting with candidates, including Rams’ passing game coordinator Shane Waldron, whom the Seahawks hired with Wilson’s endorsement.

But then Wilson watched Brady and Mahomes advance to the Super Bowl. Brady had hand-picked his new team and brought in players he wanted, including receiver Antonio Brown, whom Wilson had privately worked out with and publicly lobbied for the Seahawks to sign. Mahomes was in his second consecutive Super Bowl, playing for a coach whose wide-open offensive system had turned him loose.

Seven years ago, it was Carroll and Wilson on that stage, the beginning of something special. The Seahawks crushed Peyton Manning and the Broncos that night, and in the game’s final minutes, Wilson snuck up the sideline and dumped Gatorade over Carroll’s head. Wilson’s marriage with the Seahawks has been a success by any measure: one Super Bowl win, two Super Bowl appearances, more wins than any team other than the Patriots. But their future together seems less certain than it should given those results.

Asked if Wilson will be the Seahawks’ quarterback in 2021, a source close to the quarterback answered with just two words.

“Good question …”

 

[Machinator 32097]

 

[Machinator 32097]

[Funk Doctor Spock 11923]

Carson Wentz sucks. End of story.