How will NFLPA under Lloyd Howell approach eventual 18-game negotiation? ‘Can’t just be a food fight every single issue’

The contrast was curious.

After Aaron Rodgers tore his Achilles four plays into his residency with a team competing on an artificial surface, NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell released a statement.

“Moving all stadium fields to high quality natural grass surfaces is the easiest decision the NFL can make,” Howell said in a statement the morning after Rodgers was injured. “The players overwhelmingly prefer it and the data is clear.”

Howell was just three months into his NFLPA tenure and the message he sent seemed strong: He was not afraid to speak out on his behalf of his players.

Howell was not afraid to call the league to task on a workplace issue for his membership even as the season was only a week old, and even on an issue for which the league has cited different data conclusions than the union.

But fast-forward seven months, and Howell’s approach shifted as his chief negotiating foil publicly floated a shift from the league’s collectively bargained schedule.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell joined “The Pat McAfee Show” during NFL Draft weekend and advocated for shifting the NFL schedule from three preseason games and 17 regular-season games to two preseason and 18 regular. The NFL lengthened its schedule from 16 to 17 just three seasons ago.

“That’s just picking quality, right?” Goodell said. “If we got to 18 and two, that’s not an unreasonable thing.”

Howell and newly elected president Jalen Reeves-Maybin, a Detroit Lions linebacker, said nothing at the time.

Why?

Get to know Howell better and one realizes that his silence need not always mean agreement.

Sometimes, the fourth-ever NFLPA executive director’s silence is strategic — even if it diverges from the style of his predecessors.

“I’m looking for, ‘What’s the win-win?’” Howell told Yahoo Sports during a recent interview. “I acknowledge there’ll be disagreements along the way and we’ll work through that, but it can’t just be a food fight every single issue.

“It’s got to be what’s in the best interest of our membership — and then what is in the best interest of owners.”

How will Howell determine that best interest?

The longtime consultant and corporate executive believes in relying on data, which conveniently the players association created a vehicle for just before Howell arrived. The survey process that fueled the much-discussed NFLPA report cards have already informed not only team brass about players’ perception of workplace conditions but also the union on which battles to prioritize and how.

As the NFLPA determines how to respond to the league’s clear preference for an 18th regular-season game, the report cards and the ethos they represent will anchor discussions. Howell and Reeves-Maybin do not intend to wait six years until the collective bargaining agreement expires to move forward.

They know the league doesn’t either.

“Lloyd’s set his vision for 2030 and we know that’s the next negotiation we have,” Reeves-Maybin told Yahoo Sports during an interview from Detroit Lions training camp. “But it’s not only about preparing for that. We’re still trying to get wins, make gains here. We’re still trying to increase the revenue. We’re still trying to bring the membership together.

“It’s not just a sit back and wait until 2030.”

What will road to 18-game negotiation look like?

To understand how the union will eventually negotiate around the 18th game, look to their approach thus far to playing-surface advocacy.

Howell’s statement a year ago was not random. He was in the process of visiting all 32 NFL teams during his first season on the job, and player sentiment was overwhelming: They prefer grass.

Data collected from an addendum to the report card surveys quantified what had already been qualified: 92 percent of players prefer natural grass to artificial surfaces, 1,706 player respondents confirmed.

So Howell spoke.

“That particular topic, there’s no debate, confusion, division,” Howell said. “It’s a near-unanimous sentiment regarding the field surface and where we need to be.”

Can the union arrive at a similar quorum on whether, and with what bargaining chips, they want to expand the season?

Howell believes commenting before gathering facts and science “would be premature.” Their third year of player surveys will assist that search.

Howell said explicitly: The union is “not going to focus on 18 games” in its surveys this fall because “there’s so much more near-term stuff that they care about.” But this season the union is asking its membership to rank the issues they care most about, Howell told Yahoo Sports.

Are the players more eager to change the offseason program structure or their field surfaces? Do they more covet the expansion of the benefits program or progress toward a 50-50 revenue split? (The players currently receive roughly 48.5% of a league revenue pool.)

“We’re in the process of identifying what those priorities are, and then you know a list of, ‘Here’s what I care the most about. Here’s where I care the least about,’” Howell said. “We’re gonna have a sense of that over the course of this season.”

Expect those responses to influence what eventually becomes a negotiation regarding an 18th game. That negotiation has not yet officially begun, Howell and Reeves-Maybin confirmed, but they know their responsibility to membership is to begin developing a strategy.

“The [league] said it and planted their seed in the media, but there has not been any formal or real negotiations, anything about the 18th game,” Reeves-Maybin said. “Now that they have blatantly put it out there, I think we have more real conversations in the locker room finding out what the players really want.”

Multiple high-ranking team executives told Yahoo Sports during training camp that they view the 18th regular-season game as a matter of when, not if. One executive said the league appears to have saturated much of its major revenue streams, so an additional week of games is its best chance at a significant revenue increase. Another executive said simply: “It’s just math.”

The union embarks on a fact-finding process in an advantageous timeframe.

The NFL can opt out of several media rights deals following the 2028-29 season, two people with knowledge of the contract confirmed, creating a broadcast negotiation window before the current collective bargaining agreement expires. The NBA’s new media deals highlighted the revenue growth potential the league is likely to find with or without a change in inventory, while Goodell’s draft comments indicate league interest in negotiating with 18 games. Put another way: To proceed, the league would “need” buy-in from the players in a timeframe when the players don’t need to entertain a work stoppage to gain leverage in negotiations.

The union hopes to capitalize on that.

“The thing I love about Lloyd is he’s not just waiting until the next CBA to get something done,” NFLPA vice president and Pittsburgh Steelers defensive lineman Cam Heyward told Yahoo Sports. “He’s been very forward in thinking we have to continue to keep pushing and keep chipping at this thing.

“Lloyd is just preparing us that we have to grab for more things before we even get to that point.”

NFL players currently ‘all over the map’ on prospect of 18-game season, Howell says

In leading the union, Howell faces a challenge that Goodell in many ways does not.

Howell represents roughly 2,400 players, including practice-squad members, whose medical and financial circumstances vary drastically. Goodell represents 32 team ownership groups who have historically largely pushed him to emphasize revenue increase first, with varying degrees of health and safety concerns.

That tailored group of team owners is far more likely to reach consensus about expanding the season to 18 games than a 2,400-member group. Howell has seen that in his visits with each team’s players, as well as in meetings with 28 team ownership groups since he was elected 15 months ago. (He met with high-ranking executives of the four teams whose team owners were unavailable due to health or scheduling conflicts.)

“We’re all over the map, and that’s to be expected at this point of the discussion,” Howell said. “For most of our senior players that are toward the latter part of their career struggling with lingering injuries, the notion of playing another game is like, ‘No.’ I think you’ve got the middle: ‘Well, if these other issues are addressed in a good way, then I might see my way toward an 18th game.’ Then at the other end of the spectrum was like, ‘Sure, what’s another game? … More money — why not?’”

Howell hopes continued communication will help develop clear priorities.

In addition to his whirlwind team visits, Howell has met with Goodell “multiple times talking about a variety of issues,” he said. He characterized the meetings as conversations to understand facts and science more so than negotiations.

Howell is exploring, too, whether NFL compensation could expand beyond an all-cash model. While Tom Brady’s prolonged attempt to purchase a 10% stake of the Las Vegas Raiders indicates how far players are from access to equity in specific teams, Howell wonders whether players who “create value in this league that has been going through the roof” could increase their compensation through more creative means. Are conversations about a 50-50 revenue split oversimplified?

“When we talk about what the share split may be, that’s obviously something that we have to get into and appreciate what is the desired outcome, but it can’t be done in a vacuum,” Howell said. “Guys are picking up the word ‘equity’ in a variety of ways. They’re saying, ‘Hey, if I deferred a portion of my royalty check, if I deferred a portion of my compensation toward having equity in fill-in-the-blank…’ It could be a business venture. It could be something tangentially related to football.

“They’re definitely excited about that.”

The conversations could influence what the union brings to the negotiation table in the near and more distant future.

And they could influence how the league and union eventually settle the question of an 18th game.

“Whether 18 games is opened up formally or not, there’s a whole host of other issues that you know guys care about,” Howell said. “If those topics are addressed in a great way, then, hey, I might be open to 18 games.

“But if they’re not, there’s no reason to even go there.”

Howell will continue searching for a proposition he believes benefits both parties, the consultant in him brimming with mindsets like “collaboration” and “optimization” and “how to get to yes.” He will continue exploring multiple avenues toward leverage, Heyward saying “the thing we have to grow and I think the thing Lloyd is looking forward to growing is our war chest.”

The CBA is firm, Howell knows. But he wonders if conversations surrounding it have more nuance than public sentiment indicates.

“It’s a legal document, we’ve got to be mindful of that,” Howell said. “But if there is something that’s so obvious that we need to change, that we can do, let’s do it and keep it moving. And if there are things that are really thorny that it’s hard to get to an agreement, then OK.

“But I’m hopeful that that’ll be a really small set of things.”