We are in the home stretch in labor negotiations, but of course, this will not be a simple process. The owners are meeting in Atlanta Thursday, and hopefully, the 2011 NFL lockout is in its final moments despite any last-minute issues.

Labor meetings bring confusion … In a perfect world, we’d have a new CBA by the end of today and everyone would be happy. The players would have all voted “yes” yesterday in Washington, and the owners would all vote “yes” in Atlanta today. But if we’ve learned anything over the last four months of lockout living, it’s that nothing is ever easy when it comes to labor disputes. The players’ meetings in Washington were filled with confusion yesterday, delivering us conflicting reports and uncertainty as to how things would play out. Still, the owners expect to vote today, and we should have a settlement and new CBA in the near future. Let’s try to recap what is happening through the words of those covering the situation (keep in mind that the situation is developing by the minute):

Mark Maske of the Washington Post reports that players representatives gave conditional approval Wednesday to finish a settlement pending the resolution of a [...]