Seahawks CB Richard Sherman said players going on strike in order to get more beneficial terms in the next CBA is "100%" an option. Sherman prior to last night's ESPY Awards spoke to ESPN's Jalen Rose, who asked if NFL players "to get guaranteed contracts and some other things ... may consider having to strike." Sherman said if the NFLPA "wants to get anything done" regarding those issues, players have "got to be willing to strike." He said, "That’s the thing that guys need to 100% realize -- you’re going to have to miss games, you’re going to have to lose some money if you’re willing to make the point. That’s how MLB and NBA got it done. They missed games, they struck, flexed every bit of power they had. ... It worked out for them." He added NFL players need to "individually negotiate their own deals." Sherman: "Players get caught up in, ‘I want to be the biggest and baddest,’ and you’ve got the biggest and baddest fake deal that anybody could have." He added players "need to reevaluate how they look at contracts" regarding length. Sherman noted how top NBA players like Warriors F Kevin Durant and Cavaliers F LeBron James “are taking two-year deals like it’s nothing." Sherman: "They’re like, ‘I’ll take a two-year deal because I’m going to wait for the salary cap to increase and get another bite of the apple.’ In our sport they won’t do it” ("ESPYs Red Carpet Live," ESPN, 7/12). PRO FOOTBALL TALK's Mike Florio wrote Sherman is "absolutely right, and he needed to say it." When the owners "didn’t like the labor deal, they first opted out of the contract and then locked the players out." The owners in '11 were "willing to extend the lockout into the regular season." The players "weren’t, the owners knew it, and a deal was resolved with only one game (the Hall of Fame exhibition contest) missed." Sherman's comments do not mean a strike is "inevitable," but "without the threat of a strike, the players will never get the terms they want, and an imbalance will linger" (PROFOOTBALLTALK.com, 7/12).
