The NFL and NFL Players Association managed to hide the 61-page ruling in the landmark collusion case for more than five months. Now that the cat has escaped the bag, neither management nor the union has anything to say.

The NFL did not respond to a request for comment on the collusion ruling. The NFLPA did not respond to a request for comment, either.

The league’s ongoing silence is not surprising. The ruling, despite the victory, makes the league look not great. It confirms the longstanding suspicion that ownership meetings are “collusion meetings.”

Also, the victory makes the Commissioner and the Management Council seem weak and ineffective. They wanted the owners to collude, and the owners defied the directive. (Or “encouragement.” Eye roll.)

We think the owners and teams didn’t defy the “encouragement.” As evidenced by the fact that, after the March 2022 meeting, the once-is-an-accident of Deshaun Watson’s fully-guaranteed contract did not become a trend.

But System Arbitrator Christopher Droney didn’t see it that way. He accepted the predictable denials of those who had been caught redhanded, with a plan to tamper and — coincidentally — actual tampering. We firmly believe Droney got it wrong.

Far more surprising is the NFLPA’s failure to weaponize the ruling. It makes no sense for the union to hide what was, ultimately, a victory. They proved that the league colludes, or at least that it tries to.

What that means and where it goes from here will be a subject of further slow-time posts. Because we fully intend to milk this story from every possible angle.

Especially since, in the low tide of the offseason, there’s no bright, shiny object that they can use to distract us.