Channeling words from Malcolm X, Washington Redskins veteran defensive end and union player representative Vonnie Holliday reacted angrily to NFL owners’ ratification of a proposed new collective bargaining agreement while the players have yet to vote on the potential labor deal.
"Look guys I have no reason to lie!" Holliday wrote on his Twitter account. "The truth of the matter is we got tricked, duped, led astray, hoodwinked, bamboozled!"
That sentiment was echoed by several other NFL players who feel like they are being rushed into accepting the deal and want to carefully review the language line by line.
"Everything that happened is a prime example of the NFL PR machine being pushed to full throttle," Bills safety and union representative George Wilson said. "This is nothing more than an attempt to break the spirits of our men and to fracture the solidarity that we’ve exemplified up and to this point. This is nothing more than an attempt to get the fans to turn on the players and add even more pressure to the situation and an attempt to force-feed us the deal."
Jacksonville Jaguars linebacker Kirk Morrison was more even-handed in his comments.
"Right now, we’re moving," Morrison said. "We’re on the fast track to getting the deal done, but there’s still some issues out there that need to be heard. Today was a proposal that was agreed on by the owners, not the players. They reached an agreement among themselves and they basically said, ‘Hey, this is what we agreed upon.’ As players, we still have to look over it and make sure what’s in the proposal is something we can agree to and move forward."
Added former NFL fullback Heath Evans: "The verbiage I got was that the CBA the owners voted on had some language in it that was never agreed on in the previous days where we kind of got our hopes up thinking we were going to get a CBA done. I wasn’t surprised, but the language obviously wasn’t what we agreed to and from what I’ve heard they’re not going to sign it."
Saying they refuse to be bullied into a hasty decision, no vote has been scheduled or recertification of the union.
