It's a flurry of news today.
We wrote last week about Dan Kaplan's Tweets, saying a new framework for the NFL collective bargaining agreement could be reached within the next two weeks. Well, now we're reading (via PFT) Mark Maske's reports for the Washington Post saying sources on both sides think a completed deal can happen with two weeks!
The NFL and locked out players have made enough progress in their recent negotiations that a deal between the two sides is within reach during the next two or three weeks, people on both sides of the dispute said Tuesday.
Owners of the 32 teams, scheduled to attend a meeting in Chicago Tuesday, have been told to leave their schedules open in case the session runs late that night or spills over into the following day, said several people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations are at a sensitive stage.
Maske and Mike Florio have both written that it is possible that, at the owners meeting in Chicago next week, a new CBA could be voted on and approved. It takes 24 of 32 owners to approve a deal.
Negotiations are currently underway now between the owners and the players in Maryland, and Chris Mortenson of ESPN is reporting that both sides are in 'deal making' mode.
As Florio correctly noted earlier today, having a deal done before July 4th would be huge from a P.R. and marketing standpoint. It's also consistent with what we wrote last week. If a deal gets done before July 4th, all is forgiven and forgotten. After months of this sily, useless lockout, we fans would then have eight whole months of non-stop NFL news. We'd jump right into free agency, training camps, pre-season, and then the regular season all within the span of just two months.
It would be like serving a starving man a Thanksgiving feast.