JC Tretter called Russell Wilson a “wuss” in a text, leading to a potential cover-up.
Would you believe me if I told you that the NFL Players Association had withheld evidence of collusion between NFL owners from not only the public but also the players who were directly impacted by this collusion? That’s exactly what a 61-page document that Pablo Torre of Pablo Torre Finds Out revealed on Tuesday.
Here’s the quick synopsis of the 63-minute-long video:
- Following Deshaun Watson’s five-year, $230 million fully guaranteed contract extension in 2022, the NFLPA continued to push the priority of fully guaranteed contracts for NFL players, particularly star quarterbacks who generally have the most leverage of any players in the sport.
- After quarterbacks Lamar Jackson, Russell Wilson and Kyler Murray tried and failed to lock in fully guaranteed contracts, the NFLPA, via the mechanisms in the collective bargaining agreement, filed a grievance against NFL owners on the basis of colluding against fully guaranteed contracts. This went to arbitration and ended up receiving expedited discovery.
- In discovery, it was learned that not only did the NFL Management Council tell all NFL owners that fighting against guaranteed contracts like Watson’s was a priority for the league in a closed-door 2022 meeting, but there was also an exchange between Dean Spanos (the Los Angeles Chargers’ owner) and Michael Bidwell (the Arizona Cardinals’ owner) that hints at collusion. After Bidwell signed Murray to a contract that was not fully guaranteed, Spanos congratulated him. Later in the conversation, Bidwell replied to Spanos, “I think many teams will be happy with it once they have a chance to review. Cleveland really screwed things up, but I was resolved to keep the guaranteed relatively ‘low.’”
If the NFLPA had this information on hand, why haven’t they been blasting the airwaves with this knowledge since they received the document? Well, that brings us into the second bombshell of the story.
Former NFLPA president and NFL offensive lineman JC Tretter, who has been out of the league since 2021, is alleged to have kept this document away from both the public and the players he represented. Why? Because in the document, he calls Wilson a “wuss” for not agreeing to a fully guaranteed contract.
Tretter, whom the Green Bay Packers drafted, currently serves as the NFLPA’s Chief Strategy Officer, a role created for him by NFLPA Executive Director Lloyd Howell once Tretter’s eligibility as president expired. Howell, famously, was ushered in after an unorthodox and confidential NFLPA search — one where players claimed they were uninformed on their potential Executive Director candidates until the day of the voting. How bad was the disclosure? Per Tretter himself, only 48 of 128 player reps showed up to the meeting.
Aside from the fact that it can be perceived that Tretter hand-picked Howell just for Howell to turn around and create a job for Tretter, there are other concerns about Howell as the players’ union’s Executive Director. Howell had never previously worked in sports, coming by way of Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting company that focuses its work on contracts with the United States government. Two years ago, Booz Allen paid out a $377 million settlement for fraudulent bills related to their work with the United States government from 2011 through 2021, during Howell’s time at the company.
In short, the NFLPA has a smoking gun, but they have kept it under wraps, according to Torre’s reporting, because Tretter didn’t want his criticism of a player he was supposed to be representing documented. Mind you, this is the same Tretter who only works with the union post-playing career because Howell, a sports outsider whom Tretter is in part responsible for appointing as the NFLPA lead, created a job for him. Ultimately, Torre claims, Tretter has the ambition to become the NFLPA’s Executive Director one day, a dream that probably died now that this document has come to light.
If you’d like to watch the full video, you can find it linked below: