Commissioners largely are puppets and carrying out the wishes of owners, I really don’t know how much power they truly have. This is all on owners, imo. Not defending Manfred by any means but it’s not like he has autonomy to make a deal, the owners suck and he’s just a face/extension of them and they clearly don’t want to cut a deal outside of their extreme terms. They choose him to break/weaken the union. He was among their top lawyers before they made him commissioner. He's doing his job. Goodell is a shill for the NFL owners, yet he avoided a labor stoppage