Feint! Parry! Riposte!

We could talk the drama unfolding around Jay Cutler.

We could talk Nature versus Nurture when considering the sundry paths of Alex Smith and Aaron Rodgers.

We could talk the little moves of the NFL offseason like Jon Kitna to Dallas and what that could mean for Roy Williams whose best seasons came with Kitna.

But a less sexy news item arguably is more important to the league than anything else on or off the field. That is, Sunday the 32 player representatives elected DeMaurice Smith as the next NFLPA chief.

Smith election comes as somewhat of a surprise. An attorney with minimal NFL connections, certainly no playing experience, no labor experience, and a job history of defending those accused of white collar crime, Smith in some sense is a typical dark horse candidate.

The rancorous battle between favorites Troy Vincent and Trace Armstrong, both former NFLPA player presidents, opened the door for a third way. Smith’s election allayed concerns of a union divided before its most important battle, the Collective Bargaining Agreement’s looming end and potential 2011 lockout.

Smith by all accounts secured his election with a strong presentation and detailed plan about the NFLPA’s immediate future. Beyond strategy to employ in coming negotiations with Commissioner Goodell and the owners, Smith has highlighted better care for NFL veterans, an issue controversial and divisive under previous union chief Gene Upshaw.

Upshaw casts a large shadow over the new union head’s tenure… but Smith might represent a few more departures from Upshaw, a few new directions the union was interested in heading in this next round of negotiations.

When Kevin Mawae was elected player president of the NFLPA last year, he expressed strong interest in a rookie payscale, something Upshaw flat out dismissed. There were other grumblings by NFLPA representatives that a rookie payscale would be a solid compromise in the coming labor negotiations, a way to keep football revenue in the hands of veterans while loosening up some cost for the NFL owners.

The two frontrunners, Troy Vincent and Trace Armstrong, represented parts of the Upshaw tenure. Vincent was presumably Upshaw’s successor before falling out with the former chief. The exact reason has never been fully enumerated. Some link Vincent to an attempt to force Upshaw out. What truth is in that, I don’t know. Vincent and Upshaw diverged at some point yet Vincent still represented Upshaw’s hardline about refusing to roll back the portion of the player’s pie.

Armstrong was likely more tied to the Upshaw line than Vincent, representing an incumbent candidate of sorts.

In the end, the player representatives rejected the two likely candidates and some reach of Upshaw’s direction for an unknown commodity with an attractive vision.

While Smith was a typical dark horse candidate in one sense, he wasn’t in another. Smith won on the first ballot. Divided among four candidates, the process portended to be drawn out with several rounds of voting to winnow down the field to two. Instead, after each candidate’s presentation and 90 minutes of deliberation, Smith emerged the clear winner from the field. (Claims of an unanimous vote might be a fabrication but a simple majority out of four candidates is nothing to sneeze at.)

So far Smith has said all the right things about wanting to ensure football in 2011 and beyond while also motioning to a hardline stance in preserving the NFLPA’s gains.

Whatever plan Smith used to wow the player representatives will only become clear to us over the course of the coming year as the owners and union try to first preserve the salary cap before the 2010 NFL year. But in some sense it’s clear that the issues at hand won’t necessarily be influenced by the shadow of Upshaw’s tenure.