WASHINGTON — Quarterback Donovan McNabb eagerly bounded onto the practice field with his Minnesota Vikings teammates in Mankato, Minn., on Thursday afternoon, before being told he and other NFL players with new contracts still needed to be patient.
And then, shortly before 3 p.m. MDT, the wait was over. The NFL officially was back in business, CBA and all. That 4 1/2-month lockout? A thing of the past in every way.
“Were we going to have the opportunity to step on the field today? Was this thing going to linger?” McNabb said, explaining his thoughts while on hold for word of a completed collective bargaining agreement. “Good thing we got this thing settled. And now here we are.”
Players ratified a new, 10-year CBA on Thursday, hours after it was finalized, and the contract allows the NFL to eventually become the first major U.S. professional sports league to use blood testing for human growth hormone.
Players would be subject to random testing for HGH, in addition to annual checks — as is the case for all banned substances in the league’s drug-testing program — only after the union is confident in the way the testing and appeals process will work.
“At some point I’m pretty sure that’s going to happen, we just want to make sure it is done the right way. That’s the process we’re going through,” Broncos safety Brian Dawkins told Denver Post reporter Lindsay H. Jones after practice Thursday night at Dove Valley.
“I don’t know the details. I didn’t have time to get into all the details, but from the memo that I got, they are working on that stuff, and it will probably happen soon,” Dawkins, a member of the NFLPA’s executive committee, added. “We want this game to be fair for everybody and for everybody to play by the same rules.”
Most of the deal to end the NFL’s first work stoppage since 1987 was agreed to last month, but certain elements still needed to be ironed out after the NFL Players Association re-established itself as a union. The union — which dissolved itself in March, when the old CBA expired, allowing players to sue the league in federal court — was again formed by last weekend. Final CBA language was in place Thursday afternoon in talks between the sides’ lawyers in Washington.
Not every player welcomed the new CBA with open arms.
“We felt like it was getting shoved down our throats,” Pittsburgh Steelers offensive tackle Willie Colon said. “Our players reps (weren’t) comfortable with it . . . We’re not going to just file it away the way other teams do.”
When the union informed the league that the NFLPA’s team reps voted to approve the final agreement, it meant players who signed contracts July 26 or after — and had been forced by NFL rules to sit out practices for days — could join teammates in drills Thursday, as the new “league year” officially began.
“We were like little kids in Pop Warner who didn’t make weight, just standing around,” McNabb said.
As a final, formal step, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith will sign the CBA at the front steps of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, this morning.
