Help me out here... (we can keep this brief...)

Pretty close, but here's another part. Last year the money to split was $8bn. This year, it's $9bn and the offer presented some time back was actually for players to get more money in cap this year than last year so it's not like they're losing anything except percentage points. They're actually continuing to increase, but at a decreasing rate.

In other words, instead of players' salaries raising 10-15% per year, they'd be more like 5.

I see why there's an argument and a need for a deal, but I just don't see how the players are suffering any sort of injustice for the owners to decide to keep paying them more money.

Gotcha.. But... I have also read somewhere in this big mess that it was said that the cap was proposed to go back to 2007 levels and start increasing again? Whether it's factual or not may not matter if it was simply a proposal that was declined, but it would indicate an attempt on the NFLs part to create a "pay cut" for the players.