Retired NFL Players Hope for Win with New CBA Deal

401k, football, retirement, benefits

Recently retired New York Giants QB Eli Manning can look forward to a strong benefit package.

Ready for a break from nonstop coronavirus coverage? Here you go. NFL players will vote on the league’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), and are expected to approve the owners’ proposal this weekend, which would ensure labor peace for the next decade.

An agreement that would run through 2030 was sent to roughly 2,000 active NFL players to vote March 5, and it will pass when voting closes at midnight Saturday if a simple majority of members of the NFL Players Association vote “yes.”

While most of the attention surrounding the CBA has centered on the addition of a 17th game some time between 2021-2023 and the expansion of the playoff field from 12 to 14 teams, there’s parts to the CBA that retired players are much more interested in for obvious reasons.

The deal reportedly includes $2 billion in enhanced pensions for more than 11,500 former players, in addition to expanded healthcare benefits.

Former Buffalo Bills player Joe DeLamielleure, a Hall of Fame offensive guard who used to block for O.J. Simpson, says his NFL pension would nearly double to almost $60,000 per year if players ratify the 11-year extension of the CBA.

If the proposal is rejected, $300 million in expanded pension benefits for 2020 would be off the table, pushed down the road for consideration whenever the owners bring an updated labor proposal back to the players.

“We are in limbo,” DeLamielleure, 68, told USA Today recently. “We need the money. It would be our luck that it doesn’t pass now and we’ll have to wait until next year. But by next year, looking at actuarial tables, there will be 300 guys who die.”

DeLamielleure has long been an outspoken advocate for improved pensions for NFL players, but retired players don’t have a seat at the bargaining table. That means improvements essentially come from the sense of duty of current players and NFL team owners, and through public pressure applied by former players, who as USA Today notes typically compare the NFL benefits to better packages afforded to former MLB and NBA players.

While DeLamielleure says he’s “disappointed” with the enhancements in the currently proposed CBA, he added, “I’m glad we’re getting something, but it’s never been right.”

Back in the 2011 CBA negotiations, a “Legacy Fund” was established to which team owners make contributions. The fund benefits more than 4,700 former players who were vested in the league’s pension program prior to 1993. The NFLPA tried to build on that by pushing for further improvements to former player benefits in this next deal.

Retired player benefit examples

Here are some reported examples of what could change for retired players if the CBA is approved, as well as some additional examples from the current CBA:

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