Amid uncertainty, Eagles players avoid NovaCare practice facility

Strange day in the NFL. Here and there around the league yesterday, players showed up at team practice facilities. Most were greeted cordially, along the lines of what the league advised teams in a conference call Monday night, following U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson's injunction lifting the lockout.

The league also advised teams to keep workout rooms closed, and for coaches not to speak with players, as the NFL seeks a stay of Nelson's ruling. This apparently proved to be the case with nearly every team. Three New York Giants told reporters they worked out at the facility and one, Chris Canty, said he spoke with coaches. Also, Minnesota coach Leslie Frazier said he had a "very brief conversation" with linebacker Erin Henderson, the only Vikings player who showed up at the team's facility.

In Philadelphia, players would have been allowed into NovaCare, a team spokesman said, but they would not have been allowed to work out or interact with coaches. No Eagles showed up, though several reporters did. To find players, reporters had to head for the Power Train Institute in Cherry Hill, N.J., where 15 to 20 Eagles are doing their offseason maintenance.

"I'm not going to go running back to the facility, because I know there's a process," said tight end Brent Celek, who was among the Power Train group. "When the owners don't want us there, it's kind of pointless . . . There's no [collective bargaining agreement] in place. The owners don't want us at the facility."

Guard Todd Herremans said: "If they wanted us to be in there, they'd call us and ask us to come in."

Middle linebacker Jamar Chaney had tweeted Monday night about going to NovaCare yesterday, but Chaney, who returned yesterday morning from a weekend at home in the Palm Beach, Fla., area, conferred with teammates and ended up just driving from the airport to Power Train for his scheduled workout.

"I thought about going in, but I didn't want to be the only player over there, and I wasn't going to miss my workout," Chaney said. Chaney said he remains a bit puzzled about the "lifting," in that teams still seem to be observing the lockout in all but the most literal sense.

That will be true at least until Nelson rules on the owners' request for a stay of her ruling while they appeal. A stay would reinstate the lockout. If Nelson, who asked the players to present their argument against the stay today, declines the owners' request, they might still get the stay from the three-judge panel that will hear their case in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Nobody knows how long any of this will take. If a stay isn't granted within a day or two, one would think Nelson might direct the owners to put rules in place and start the league year, meaning free agency and trades of players soon. But with the 3-day draft starting tomorrow, how long would the league have to tinker before being forced to really open for business? And how valid are the league's concerns that, with the union decertified and the NFL's antitrust exemption no longer in place, any rules regarding free agency and so forth could be later declared illegal if players sued?

In a conference call with reporters yesterday evening, NFL executive vice president Jeff Pash couldn't offer much direction, as the NFL Network reported that the NFL Players Association directed agents with free-agent clients to start calling teams and attempting to negotiate contracts. (Obviously, the league says teams are not supposed to agree to such contracts, or even discuss them.)

Pash said the league remains confident of its legal position. He said the NFL is looking to the courts for more direction about how to proceed as its stay request and appeal are processed.

Asked about needing direction, Pash said: "There are a couple of things going on in that respect. One is obviously the stay motion and establishing a schedule from which the stays will be considered and the briefing in the appeals court. The second is a request that the players filed [Monday] night with Judge Nelson asking - it's called a motion for reconsideration - basically asking that she enter a new and different form of injunction, which would give a much broader form of injunction than was entered by the judge [Monday]. So that's obviously something that needs to be addressed as well. I think both sides need to have clarity as to what the court's order is, whether a stay is in effect and the like."

Pash also said: "There's a considerable degree of uncertainty about what exactly the scope of the relief is in light of the filing by the players [Monday] night." He repeatedly referenced the Monday comments of league counsel Jim Quinn, who spoke of the NFL needing a few days to "let the dust settle."

"The fundamental point is that we are going to comply with whatever the court orders are," Pash said. *