NFL Lockout: Owners, Players Meeting Today And Reportedly In "Deal-Making" Mood

The NFL owners and players are sitting back down again today to continue negotiations on a settlement to the legal dispute. The end goal is to get a collective bargaining agreement figured out but first the legal mess needs to be sorted out. In reality it's all sort of an intertwined mess so we just sort of end up discussing both of them together.

What's particularly interesting is the notion that the owners might be looking to have a framework figured out soon so they can present it to the full ownership at their league meetings next week in Chicago. The two sides have a lot of work to get done to have even a framework in place so hopefully that means a whole lot of negotiating over the next week. It's interesting to note that the lawyers have gotten back involved, which might be a good thing in this instance (not that having lawyers involved isn't always a good thing!). While the two sides will work to get a deal done, the lawyers are needed to clean things up and handle a lot of the more intricate details of the CBA. Hooray lawyers!

In order for a deal to get done on the others side, 24 of the 32 teams have to vote in favor of the deal. PFT made the point that even if a deal isn't completely done and ready, if there is a decent framework in place, the owners could pre-approve the eventual deal to avoid bringing it back for another vote.

For now, it sounds like we'll want to keep our eyes and ears open next Tuesday. More and more people are joining the push in thinking a deal could be done sooner rather than later. While we'll probably know something next Tuesday (be it positive, negative, or "we need more time"), the next few days will really be key. For now let's just cross our fingers and hope for the best. In the meantime, Joel Thorman continues to track this story over at SB Nation NFL via a lengthy story stream.