The fate of the N.F.L.’s proposed 10-year labor deal will reach a critical juncture this week. Though the players union’s executive committee and the 32 representatives from each team did not agree last week to endorse the proposal, the entire union membership is expected to begin voting this week on the far-reaching agreement.
As in most labor negotiations, the proposed collective bargaining agreement resulted from a series of compromises, calculations and competing priorities. The calculus is compounded by the makeup of the roughly 2,000 N.F.L. players who will vote, a much more difficult membership to wrangle than the N.