The NFL and the NFL referees union have been in a standoff over a new collective bargaining agreement for months. It's gotten so bad that the league has started training replacement officials for the 2026 season. But the league remains optimistic that a deal can get done and is assigning them to teams.
According to ESPN's Kevin Seifert, the NFL has internally made its assignments of officiating teams this week and has distributed them to the relevant parties. The league officials are still under contract until the end of May.
"The NFL distributed crew assignments to referees this week amid indications of continued progress toward a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Referees Association, sources told ESPN," Seifert wrote.
"The assignments did not include any of the replacement officials the league has onboarded and vetted in preparation for a potential lockout. The league's officiating department has planned to start training those replacement officials beginning Friday. The existing CBA between the sides is due to expire May 31."
Plugging the Holes
The NFL is keeping its bases covered though. Two years of negotiations have yielded nothing more than a chasm of difference in what it wants and what the union wants.
But while the NFL is making moves to prepare the aforementioned replacement referees, the league is also going to do its best to avoid a nightmare scenario like the infamous "Fail Mary" game of 2012. The NFL recently passed a series of rule changes that will give it more authority to remotely officiate games - and most likely correct blatant errors that get inevitably get made on the field in important games.
Even so, fans are extremely fearful that every single game is going to result in terrible officiating.
© Matthew Emmons-Imagn Images
As far as the negotiations themselves are concerned, Seifert reported that the NFL's most recently public offer included a six-year deal with a pay raise. However, that offer also included some restrictions that the NFLRA has resisted.
"At the time the talks stalemated this spring, the NFL had offered the NFLRA a six-year deal that averaged annual raises of 6.45%, sources said. The average NFL official earned $385,000 in 2025," Seifert wrote.
"The league also pushed the NFLRA to allow several fundamental changes to officials' job structure, which the NFLRA largely resisted early in talks. Those measures include increasing the probationary period for new officials from three to five years, shortening the "dead period" during the offseason to allow for more training and reducing the seniority-based approach to covering playoff games."
Last time it took a cataclysmic officiating error to get a deal over the finish line. Hopefully we can avoid that this time around.
