Members of the NFL Players Association have unanimously ratified a collective bargaining agreement with owners, an association executive confirmed Monday.

Negotiators had reached a tentative agreement very early Monday, according to a report on NFL.com.

On Sunday, the NFL quoted New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees as telling fans in an email, “The deal is almost done.”

Brees is one of 10 NFL players who filed an antitrust lawsuit against the league over a lockout imposed by league owners.

The lockout started in March.

Both sides over the weekend discussed details that players wanted resolved in the agreement. They included the contractual handling of player injury, an opt-out clause in the 10-year deal and, “most pointedly, the potential timeline for the recertification of the NFLPA (NFL Players’ Association) as a union,” the NFL said.

The proposed collective bargaining agreement with 1,900 players would last through the 2020 season.

An originally proposed agreement included a new rookie compensation system, a salary cap of $142.4 million per club in 2011 and additional retirement benefits, according to the NFL.

In a bid to reduce injuries, the pact limited practice times and full-contact practices. Clubs were to receive credit for actual stadium investment and up to 1.5 percent of revenue each year.

 

Under the owners’ proposed plan, players could remain in the player medical plan for life,. They also would have an enhanced injury protection benefit of up to $1 million of a player’s salary for the year after his injury and up to $500,000 in the second year after his injury.

Free-agent signing could begin this week and the four-week preseason could go forward with only one hitch, according to the NFL.

The first preseason game — the annual Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, between the Chicago Bears and St. Louis Rams — was canceled because of the delay in opening camps, NFL Commission Roger Goodell said. It had been scheduled for Aug. 7.

The regular season is set to open on Sept. 8.

The owners call for the free-agent signing period to begin this week.

The league’s owners imposed the lockout on March 11, suspending the labor deal in place at the time in hopes of creating a new financial structure.

In addition to Brees, players Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and seven others subsequently filed an antitrust lawsuit against the league on behalf of other current and eligible NFL athletes.

A judge in early April joined that action with another filed by retired players.

Since the lockout, the two sides have faced off in courts and around conference tables. The major issues have revolved around how to divide the billions of dollars of revenue reaped via the league each year, rules of free agency, the rookie wage scale, retirement benefits and a host of other matters.

The heart of the issue between the players and the owners was how to divide the league’s $9 billion in revenue.

Under the old agreement, NFL owners took $1 billion off the top of that revenue stream. After that, the players got about 60 percent.

The owners said the old labor deal didn’t take into account the rising costs related to building stadiums and promoting the game.

The players argued that the league had not sufficiently opened up its books to prove this.