NFL Players Approve New CBA
ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports via Twitter, Sunday morning, that the NFL and its players have agreed to a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). The new CBA will run through the year 2030 and includes a flurry of changes that the league and fans will see starting in the new league year on March 18th. They will implement perhaps the biggest change for the viewing audience in the 2020 season... expanding the playoff field.
Beginning in the upcoming NFL season, fourteen teams will make the NFL playoffs with seven from the AFC and seven from the NFC. With an uneven number of teams from each conference now making the playoffs, only the number one seeded team from each conference will receive the all-important first-round bye. This will add two games to the Wild Card Weekend.
Along with expanding the playoff field, the NFL will extend its regular season in 2021 from sixteen games to seventeen games. Per NFL.com's Judy Battista, the new seventeen game schedule will impact player development and team practices beginning in 2021.
The 17th game necessitated changes that will affect player development and could show up on the field immediately. Once the 17-game regular season starts, teams will be limited to 16 padded practices during training camp and no more than three in a row. That is a big change from the current padded-practice limit of 28, so expect coaches to have some thoughts on how that will affect preparation. There will also be a five-day acclimation period that will limit the kind of work done at the very start of camp.
No practice can last longer than 2.5 hours and players can't be at the team facility for more than 12 hours per day. And there must be a "bye week" after the third and final preseason game before the start of the regular season.
And this is a big one: Teams are not allowed to add padded practices in the regular season once the 17-game seasons start. Under this new CBA, during the regular season, padded practices will be limited to 14, 11 of which must be held during the first 11 weeks. All of that will remain in place even when the 17-game seasons start.
The extension of the regular season will also expand rosters on both the practice squad and the active roster for game days. The agreement expands the practice squad to 14 players by 2022 and the active roster for game days to 48 from 46. The active will include 8 offensive linemen as a requirement.
On the financial side of the CBA, the leagues players will see an increase in minimum pay and player revenue share. Sam Acho, an NFL veteran, explains in the video below why this approved CBA was a good deal for 99% of the NFL’s players.
The vote by the players, despite Acho’s opinion, was very close. 1,019 voted yes while 959 voted no according to Adam Schefter. 51.5% voted yes, putting an end to one of the most intense CBA negotiations the league has seen.
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