Just as I wrapped up a half-hour conversation with former Ravens and Jaguars tackle Eugene Monroe, the Washington Post published a story by veteran NFL writer Mark Maske. The first sentence of this broader piece on the NFL’s labor talks with NFLPA laid out the owners’ enduring desire for an 18-game schedule, even after all the league’s been through, player safety-wise, this decade. The second read, “Many owners also seem willing to make concessions to the union on the commissioner’s disciplinary authority and the sport’s marijuana policy.”
I texted a screenshot of the paragraph over to Monroe, which validated the suspicions he’d told me he held.