It appears, moreso than any time in the past week, that the NFL lockout will end soon. Reports coming out late Sunday night and Monday morning indicate that the players and owners have agreed upon the remaining points to the CBA and a vote will be forthcoming both Monday and Wednesday to ratify it by both parties.
That means teams may start to make transactions as early as Monday and the league year will start pretty quickly. The NFLPA should hold a press conference Monday announcing the deal, which simply needs to be made official with a majority vote by all the NFL players. The system for doing this is already in place, so things can happen pretty quickly.
According to Adam Schefter, the vote Wednesday will be whether to recertify as a union, and, if approved, will lead to teams’ being able to officially recertify by Friday, which means free agency would start on Saturday. That schedule is going to make the first week of preseason games interesting, but there’s been no word that owners plan on cancelling that at this point.
Overall, this is good news, even if things may not get going for another week.