DeMaurice Smith led the National Football League Players Association from 2009 to 2023, guiding the union through a lockout, two contentious collective bargaining agreements, and numerous arbitrations and lawsuits against the league.
That his account of those years in his upcoming 354-page book, Turf Wars, takes shots at the NFL and owners is no surprise. He describes NFL commissioner Roger Goodell as a “cold, dark void.” Of the Dallas Cowboys owner, he writes, “If Jerry Jones saw a dollar bill on the ground, I truly believe he’d stop and pick it up.” He writes of league general counsel Jeff Pash, “definitely the most unscrupulous. In a corporation filled with ruthless people, Pash has everyone else beat.”
Of Goodell’s relationship with owners, whom he describes as a “cabal of greedy billionaires,” Smith writes of the commissioner, “he was in the employ of madmen.”
But Smith, who emailed a soon-to-be-published edition to Awful Announcing, also has sharply negative things to say about specific players, first and foremost a particular vaccine skeptic.
He is clearly no fan of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who publicly opposed the 2020 CBA, which narrowly passed 1,019-959 in part because of opposition to the addition of a 17th regular season game.
“The god of Cheesehead Nation was isolated and dismissive,” reads Smith’s description of Rodgers in a players meeting. “He sat in the back row of the meeting room, issuing loud sighs before standing for a dramatic exit. An incredible quarterback, to be sure, but an even more impressive antagonist.”
Then there is this line, “In August 2021, my phone chirped with a text from Aaron Rodgers. ‘Can you call me?’ it read. Could I not run into traffic instead?”
He takes aim at another combative quarterback, current Atlanta Falcon and former Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins. Recalling a meeting in a conference room at Dulles Airport with union staff, players, and owners to discuss kneeling during the national anthem to protests police brutality, Smith quotes Cousins saying, “‘I just think we all need to understand…that kneeling may be hurting the game and having an effect on revenue.'”
Smith notes Cousins was the only white player there, and recounts the response from top union official Don Davis, who is Black. “‘Kirk,’ he said, ‘do you know what the Black players hear when you say that? That the n*****s need to shut up.'”
Racial concerns permeate the book, from his recounting of his family history (his ancestors were slaves and sharecroppers) to noting the poor track record of the NFL in hiring Black coaches. Smith recounts teaching his son how to respond if pulled over by the police, down to when to reach for the glove compartment.
“I would stand behind his car, playing the role of a trigger-happy officer, and run through scenarios. If he reached into his glove box too abruptly as he grabbed the car’s registration… bang-bang.”
Smith, a litigator, was an outsider when tapped to run the league following the sudden death in 2008 of longtime executive director Gene Upshaw. Smith’s tenure garnered its fair share of criticism. The 2011 CBA resulted in salary caps that barely moved over the first few years of the decade-long agreement. In 2009, the cap was $123 million, and it was even less in the first year of the new deal. It would take until 2014 to exceed the 2009 figure.
Since then, the cap has surged, reaching $255.4 million this season, a figure that does not include approximately another $100 million in player benefits. He points to other wins, such as reducing practices, tying the franchise tag to the average of the top players at a position, and installing a salary floor so teams could not underspend.
One of the most high-profile cases of his tenure was the Tom Brady Deflategate case. He recounts being baffled over why the NFL pursued it when the science showed weather conditions could account for the low air pressure. When Goodell suspended Brady for four games, Brady even offered to play those games for free to get on the field, he wrote.
Smth got to know Brady during the 2011 lockout, when it was Brady’s name on the lawsuit against the league. It was Brady who Smith instructed to inform the NFL, through his team’s owner, Robert Kraft, that the players had secretly purchased work stoppage insurance worth $850 million. Smith depicts this moment, months into the lockout, as the regular season increasingly looked like it may not occur, as the key moment that brought the owners to the table.
Some will surely disagree with that assessment. Left unmentioned was an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruling that found the lockout legal and overturned a lower court decision (there were exceptions for rookies and free agents, so players not under contract). However, Smith’s point is that owners assumed players would break when their first paycheck was threatened, and this remains conventional wisdom about the power dynamic between owners and players in football.
There is one owner who receives praise, Kraft, whom he even mentions in the acknowledgements section. “Despite our occasional fights and disagreements, you have been a good friend and provided wise and indispensable counsel.”
Robert Kraft and DeMaurice Smith
Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports
Smith doesn’t comment on his successor, Lloyd Howell, another football outsider. Under Howell, the NFLPA has not appealed an arbitrator’s decision that found, while the NFL encouraged teams not to guarantee contracts, there was no proof of collusion. It was Smith who filed the initial complaint with the arbitrator, and under Smith’s leadership, the NFLPA appealed several arbitrators’ decisions to federal court (Deflategate was one).
“There were people inside our building who thought it was a waste of time, but internally, our office had evidence of collusion, including hearing from multiple sources that the league and teams were discussing their avoidance of fully guaranteed contracts,” he wrote.
If Smith were still in his old seat, there is little doubt he would have been running to the courthouse doors as soon as the ink was dry on the arbitrator’s report.
Turf Wars will be published by Random House on August 5.