Removing the cap is “obviously a big change,” said Ted Frank, the president of the Center for Class Action Fairness. “The real question,” he added, “is whether it is just one set of changes or whether there is a second set of changes where the N.F.L. gives with one hand and makes the restrictions tougher and takes away with the other hand.”

Legal experts said that the new N.F.L. settlement could provide a blueprint for other concussion cases, including those brought by former players against the N.H.L.

The experts said they expected more former N.F.L. players to drop their objections to the proposed settlement if only because the likelihood of winning a larger award was diminished.

“There is going to be folks who want to opt out, but once the judge approves it, the threshold for getting it reversed is so high that contesting it further doesn’t really make sense,” said Michael LeRoy, who teaches law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “The bottom line is, you can’t get everything you want.”

As in the original agreement, the league will set aside $75 million for base-line testing of retirees and $10 million for concussion education. But a provision in the original agreement that would have prevented players who received cash payouts from suing the N.C.A.A. “or any other collegiate, amateur or youth football organization” has been removed from the new proposed settlement.

The revised plan took about six months to complete partly because all 32 team owners of the N.F.L. had to consider the merits and risks of making an open-ended commitment to fund cash awards. The league wanted to ensure that a revised settlement would be approved by the retirees and stand up under scrutiny if the settlement was appealed.

The league has been eager to complete a deal. Since the original agreement was announced, the league has been dogged by suspicions that the owners could have paid much more to settle the case. In that agreement, the owners had to pay half of the settlement in the first three years and the rest during the following 17 years, or a few million dollars per team per year.