The NFL is moving toward a step it never wants to take in public but clearly wants ready in private, hiring replacement officials.
League sources said Sunday that NFL owners are “alarmed” by the state of negotiations with the NFL Referees Association and have authorized staff members to begin hiring and onboarding replacement officials in the coming weeks as the current labor deal nears its end. The league and the union’s collective bargaining agreement expires May 31, and the league is now operating as if a work stoppage is a real possibility.
The league has already begun compiling a list of college-level officials to recruit, and owners are expected to approve a broad set of replay enhancements designed to support replacement officials in preseason and regular-season games. A league source said training for replacement officials will begin May 1.
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That date matters. Once onboarding and training begin, one league source suggested the path back to a deal gets tougher simply because the economic incentive changes. “The opportunity to reach an agreement with our current union becomes a bigger challenge, just from simple economics,” the source said.
Owners “alarmed,” league expecting a lockout
The NFL sent a memo to clubs last week prohibiting public comment on the negotiations, but the tone behind the scenes at the league meetings at the Arizona Biltmore resort was described as bleak. One league source said the league office is expecting and preparing for a lockout.
“We are so close to expiration and so far apart on economics, that unless an act of God gets involved…” the source said.
The league’s contingency planning is shaped by how the last major officiating labor fight played out. During the 2012 lockout, replacement referees worked the first three weeks of the regular season, a stretch remembered most for the “Fail Mary” ending in Seahawks–Packers that helped bring the dispute to a quick close. The league’s internal takeaway, according to a source, was that it waited too long to prepare back then.
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“To expect people to jump from college to the pros and change in speed in that short of time is destined to be a challenge to succeed,” the league source said. “We’re not going to do that. … There will be no panic, and we have begun preparations for the expiration. We have to do it. Otherwise, it would be just gross negligence.”
What the money and structure fight looks like
The league has offered the NFLRA a six-year deal that averages annual raises of 6.45%, according to sources, and said the average NFL official earned $385,000 in 2025.
But the sticking points go beyond dollars. League sources said there are wide gaps on both economics and the seasonal structure of the job. The league has also pushed for changes to how officials are evaluated, developed, and assigned, the kind of accountability language that sounds good in a statement and gets complicated fast when it affects paychecks and postseason opportunities.
The measures cited as priorities include:
-Increasing the probationary period for new officials from three to five years
-Shortening the offseason “dead period” to allow more training, including requiring lower-performing officials to work spring football games to improve
-Reducing seniority-based playoff assignments in favor of performance-based assignments
“We really want to follow the model, which is the NFL’s kind of DNA, of you pay for performance,” a league source said. “You have to perform every day.”
The next month decides whether this becomes real
The league’s hiring plan has been described as targeting roughly 150 mostly small-college officials, with onboarding beginning as early as April and a four-day clinic in May as part of the ramp-up.
In other words,the NFL is trying to make sure that if it ends up using replacement officials, it isn’t doing it with two weeks of crash-course prep and a prayer, because the last time that happened, the sport spent three weeks watching rule enforcement turn into a weekly debate show.
The league says it will keep negotiating. The union believes it has leverage. The clock says May 31. And the NFL is now acting like it plans to play football in August either way.
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