Al Davis Said to Be NFL’s Deal Breaker

Al Davis, president of the partnership group that controls the Raiders, is the “management person who stalled the peace movement” in the NFL this week at New York, a players’ association source said Thursday.

An owners’ source agreed that if Davis had stayed out of the negotiations in recent months, and particularly this week, the sides would by now have come to a new collective bargaining agreement establishing most veterans as free agents.

Davis, who at one time favored free agency, did not respond to calls to the Raider office. But one of the negotiators who sat with him at player-owner conferences in New York this week said:

“Al led the charge that kept us from implementing a permanent agreement to replace last week’s temporary agreement in principle. (Both sides) had OK’d the (proposed) exceptions to free agency (one franchise player per club, two transition players in 1993, one in 1994). Al wants more exceptions.”

And, apparently, he persuaded the two other owners’ negotiators--John Shaw of the Rams and Dan Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers--to go along with him, abandoning a key provision of last week’s temporary agreement.

Rooney had stood at Commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s shoulder when the NFL committed to the temporary document last week.

Shaw, who replaced Denver owner Pat Bowlen in the negotiations, was traveling and unavailable.

Meanwhile, each side said the other was responsible for the breakdown.

Charged James Quinn, the players’ negotiator, in a statement: “Hard-line owners came to New York to kill the deal made by (Commissioner) Paul Tagliabue and Dan Rooney on behalf of the owners. . . . These hard-line owners made new demands to gut the joint agreement in principle.”

The league, however, said the players had broken off negotiations, not the owners.

In Minneapolis, Federal Judge David Doty said he would meet in his chambers next week with lawyers representing both sides.

The lawyers disagree as to whether negotiations are permanently off pending Doty’s rulings on the case. Most players’ representatives say they can’t make a deal now. Most owners’ lawyers say they still can.

Last week’s temporary agreement authorized salary caps “if necessary” and free agency for five-year veterans.

But after years of wrangling, the sides are still at odds on two other issues--the number offree-agent exceptions and the number of months to allow negotiations between owners and free agents.

The players want their free agents free to negotiate with anyone, except during training camp.

The owners want to limit discussions with free agents to a 60-day period before the draft and perhaps 30 days after. That was the last major unresolved issue last week when the temporary agreement was announced--the only major unresolved issue, in fact, until Davis revived the battle over free-agent exceptions.

Davis, formerly known as a players’ owner, apparently changed his position during an off-season owners’ meeting, when, witnesses said, he stood up and forcefully argued that “football is different from baseball” and that “large numbers of free agents would ruin” pro football.

His impassioned speeches at that time got him promoted to the NFL’s powerful Management Council, because, another owner said later: “Davis is a football man and I’m not. If he’s against free agency, we better go slow.”