INDIANAPOLIS — The NFL players union could at least send roses to Nadia McManus’ hotel room in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
Nadia and her husband Brandon McManus were in the middle of their vacation in Mexico when an emergency players union meeting was called for Tuesday in Indianapolis.
As the Broncos’ player rep, McManus’ presence was needed. Never mind it was McManus’ calming presence on a conference call last week that led to tabling the discussion and vote on a new 17-game collective bargaining proposal in exchange for a face-to-face meeting with owners at the NFL Combine here.
Three days into his vacation, McManus left his wife and flew Tuesday from Mexico to Indy. The CBA discussion was late Tuesday night with the vote coming at 12:46 a.m. Wednesday.
The 32 player reps voted 17 to 14 with one abstention to accept the owners’ latest proposal. McManus was among the “no” votes.
“It was a “close no,’’’ McManus said early Wednesday morning from the Miami airport – where he was getting ready to board a connection back to Mexico to rejoin his wife for the final day-and-a-half of their vacation. “There were two things I wanted to see changed (with the owners’ proposal from last week.)”
One was the owners’ $250,000 cap on game 17 that would have cheated all players making more than $4.5 million a year. The Broncos have six such players under contract for 2020. The owners did lift the cap in their revised proposal Tuesday night.
And the second revision the Broncos’ placekicker sought – really for his colleagues more than himself -- regarded work rules and health care-threshold benefits.
“To me, it just wasn’t enough,’’ McManus said. “The concerns that were expressed were basically we weren’t getting enough back in return for the risk we were taking on with the 17th game. I think there could have been a little more negotiations. Because the owners seemed willing to listen to the quality of life stuff we had proposed to them.
“I think that’s why the vote was so close because a lot of people thought there was some more wiggle room there. But the “yesses” carried it.’’
The next step was for players union administrators to send the approved CBA proposal to the entire 2,000-plus player body by e-mail with a request to vote on the agreement and DocuSign it.
The proposal does not come with a player-rep recommendation. That would have required a two-thirds majority. But a simple majority approval was enough to send it off to the rank-and-file.
After the vote, a bunch of players went out to further talk about the CBA. McManus needed to be at the airport by 5 a.m. He slept on the plane.
