Steely McBeam
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- Mar 20, 2019
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The push for 18 games has become a potential 17-game compromise, with the growing sense that, eventually but inevitably, the regular season will expand by one game. Still, it’s going to take some work to get enough players to agree to adding another game that counts, in exchange for taking away one or two games that don’t count plus more money.
Steelers guard Ramon Foster and center Maurkice Pouncey, who serve as the team’s NFL Players Association representatives, recently came out strongly against a 17th game.
“I hate it,” Pouncey told Mark Kaboly of TheAthletic.com. “What is their reasoning behind it? I don’t understand. At some point, you have to have a good reason. There is no good reason. At some point, you have to make the game better.
“[The owners] already get enough. Quit being greedy. The game is already great. If you want to do anything, make it safer. They are greedy. Greedy. They want more money and they are already billionaires.”
Pouncey insists that the NFLPA won’t go along with an extra regular-season game, especially if the extra revenue from that extra game simply gets dumped into the overall salary cap allocation, bumping it by an estimated $8 million per team per year. Foster agrees.
“You think if we add another $8 million that it is going to help the middle class of this league or is going to be, ‘Hey, a $200 million quarterback or $24 million [per year] for an outside rusher?'” Foster told Kaboly. “You add $8 million to the cap, who is it going to go to? You know how this works. It is not going to a guy like me or [B.J Finney] or Tyson [Alualu] or Dan [McCullers]. We want to fix the middle class. We want to fix that bubble in the middle. If they are trying to get paid, shouldn’t we?”
Foster has a point. In order to get enough rank-and-file votes, the rank-and-file will have to believe that the extra money from the extra games will be going to them and not to the star players. Significantly increasing minimum salaries could help accomplish that. Other terms could be needed.
Ultimately, however, it will come down to a vote of all players. And what the Steelers player reps or their players think won’t matter. In 2011, the Steelers voted 78-6 against the then-new CBA, which otherwise had more than enough votes to easily pass.