Tom Pelissero

USA TODAY Sports

If the NFL insists upon gaining the right to discipline players for DUI arrests prior to due process in the legal system, the players union won't agree to a comprehensive drug policy.

"That's what our players have told us," George Atallah, the NFL Players Association's assistant executive director of external affairs, told USA TODAY Sports on Saturday.

"The issue of suspending or disciplining players upon a DUI arrest is a recent introduction, and our players have told us that it's a nonstarter."

After more than three years of stops and starts, discussions on the new policy – which would include blood testing for human growth hormone, as promised in the 2011 collective bargaining agreement – have become more intense in the past month.

But 24 hours before the regular season's first Sunday kickoffs, a deal remained hung up on a few issues, including whether the league can discipline players – whether by suspending them or making teams deactivate them for a game after an arrest – before the legal system plays out.

The NFL has made clear it wants to toughen up its DUI policy, and the NFLPA is on board. However, any system that punishes players before due process would set a precedent the union worries could eventually be applied to other matters.

Atallah declined to address the other unresolved issues in negotiations, saying "officially everything" is unresolved until a deal is done, despite recent speculation it could materialize at any time.

"We'd prefer to be talking directly to the NFL as opposed to providing a status in response to some of the ridiculous reports that have been floated in the last three to four days," Atallah said.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league had no update.

Two people with knowledge of the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the other hold-ups now are issues related to marijuana and how an agreement would impact the statuses of recently suspended players such as Denver Broncos receiver Wes Welker and Cleveland Browns receiver Josh Gordon, who were disciplined under the 2006 drug policy.

The collective bargaining agreement, ratified in August 2011, included a provision to test for HGH. Details of that process, including a union-demanded population study, have been agreed to for more than a year. So have changes that would reclassify stimulants such as Adderall and diuretics as substances of abuse, not performance-enhancing, in certain cases.

But negotiations stalled in August 2013 on the issue of whether commissioner Roger Goodell, who already agreed to cede his authority over appeals of positive drug tests, would also hand over to neutral arbitration appeals under the drug policy related to legal matters and evidentiary cases.

A compromise on that matter is in place, one of the people with knowledge of negotiations said. But like everything else, the agreement is tentative as the sides try to work through the rest of their issues.

"I don't know how you can get any closer than we thought we agreed to it in 2011," Goodell told reporters this week. "It was in our agreement, and we felt that we had an HGH policy that was agreed to. We've had varying discussions with the NFLPA about getting that instituted.

"We think it's overdue to get (a drug policy) done. We think it's in the best interest of the players, the best interest of the game and the best interest of generations of young kids that look up to us. So, we welcome getting it done and we're anxious to do so."

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