The NFL has gone so far off the rails with player punishment that it's starting to look like the WWE. Although the league would probably disagree with that statement, that's the opinion of NFLPA president Eric Winston.
Winston did an interview on Wednesday for the first time since the NFL threatened to suspend four players, and let's just say that the Bengals offensive lineman is not happy with the league right now.
The NFLPA president compared the NFL to the WWE, which is a good thing for the WWE, but probably not such a good thing for the NFL.
"It's definitely peak silliness and peak unprofessionalism," Winston said during an interview on PFT Live when he was asked about the NFL's suspension threat against James Harrison, Clay Matthews, Julius Peppers and Mike Neal.
"It is what it is," Winston continued. "And unfortunately we've gone from this place where NFL [business] used to be conducted in a super-professional way by men that have played this game for a long time and a front office that has run this great game for a long time to now it's almost seemingly like these scripts that are pulled from WWE Smackdown or something like that."
Someone who probably agrees with WInston is John Cena, who cracked a joke about Goodell and McMahon while hosting the ESPYs in July.
Anyway, back in July, Winston said that Roger Goodell's penchant for player punishment was so bad that it was starting to hurt the competitive balance of the NFL.
If Vince McMahon wants to affect competitive balance, he sets up a ladder match. For Goodell, he can just suspend a player. From Winston's point of view, player punishments have gotten so ridiculous that he wants to know why the NFL owners haven't stepped in to stop Goodell.
"It's hard to understand why this is being allowed to continue on by some ownership that has some control but it is and we're going to keep fighting," Winston said. "We're going to keep advising our players in an open and honest way exactly about what their rights are and about what their options are and we'll continue to go down this road and we'll continue to fight for our players."
None of the four players have decided if they're going to cooperate with the NFL. If they don't cooperate in the league's Al Jazeera investigation, they'll be indefinitely suspended beginning on Aug. 26.
Despite the threat of a suspension, Winston said the NFLPA isn't necessarily pushing the players to cooperate.
"We've spent the last few days advising our players and letting them know in a completely honest and open way exactly what their options are, what they want to do," Winston said. "Each case is different, each guy is different. Each guy might want to do different things so no matter what we're going fight for them like crazy like we always do, and we're going go and have our players' backs. That's what we're all about and that's all we can do and that's what we're going to continue to do."
Winston also echoed the sentiment of Aaron Rodgers, who told Jim Rome on Wednesday that NFL was bullying players.
"When [the NFL] can't get their way they're going to bully you and they're going to try to bully you and maybe sadly that's where negotiations and things like that have gone to in America," Winston said. "That's something I'm starting to see a lot more of. But on top of it, it's also like you get to this point of where do we go from here? How do we resolve any of these differences? And it's tough. That's the most frustrating thing for me I guess."
As Rodgers pointed out during his interview, if the NFL players are mad because Goodell has too much power, they only have themselves to blame. Goodell was given his power thanks to the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), which was agreed to by the league's players.
