You never want to count your chickens before they hatch, just as you don't want to assume the proposed CBA outlined earlier this week will in fact be put into place without any issues. However, it seems like a deal is all but inevitable at this point. Aside from tying up a few loose ends, such as the rookie wage scale, the discussion has seemed to move on from what the new CBA will look like to when it will go into place.
With training camp set to start at the end of July, it is important for both sides of this issue to have time for the CBA to be approved and the new league year to start. Free agency isn't going to happen overnight, nor is the reconvening of teams, so the hope is for the league year to open by mid-July at the latest. According to Yahoo! Sports, July 15 could be the target date.
"That kind of timeline is altogether possible," a source on the owners’ side said Tuesday after the owners spent a little less than six hours hearing from Commissioner Roger Goodell about the state of the collective bargaining agreement talks with the players. Just as important, the owners were given a chance to object to the basic concepts put before them. The league went so far as to give the owners an extra day to discuss the negotiations.
In the end, the meeting became a day trip.
Obviously this issue won't be a thing of the past until everything is official, but right now it looks like the two sides are on track to hammer out an agreement sometime soon.