Much has been made recently about the collusion grievance filed by the NFLPA against the NFL and the fallout from an arbitrator’s findings on the case being made public. Another case between the two has likewise recently come to light. 
Former Packers and Browns center J.C. Tretter – who served as NFLPA president before occupying his current role as chief strategy officer for the union – spoke two years ago about the state of the running back market. Given the flat financial growth seen at the position at that point, Tretter openly remarked about the possibility of players fabricating and/or exaggerating injuries to help their negotiating position. The NFL filed a grievance over the matter; the details of the case were revealed during the latest collaboration between Pablo Torre of the Pablo Finds Out podcast and Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio (video link).
The NFLPA offered a statement to Florio noting how no evidence was found that running backs (or other players) faked an injury. A number of high-profile running backs met virtually to discuss their options regarding leverage in contract negotiations in the wake of Tretter’s remarks. Despite that fact no action was taken in terms of false claims related to injuries, the league ended up winning the grievance since Tretter violated the CBA with his comments.
“The Arbitrator upheld the Management Council’s grievance in its entirety and found that Mr. Tretter’s statements violated the CBA by improperly encouraging players to fake injury,” a league statement supplied to Florio reads in part. “As a result, he prohibited Mr. Tretter and the union from such conduct in the future. The NFL did not allege that any individual player ever feigned injury.”
As was the case in the collusion grievance, nothing from the February 2025 ruling was made public by either side. While a subsequent statement from the league says (via Florio) teams were informed of the grievance during the spring, a general manager contacted by Florio about the matter was met with a puzzled response. The lack of public knowledge on the Tretter case came about in the wake of the joint decision by the league and union to keep the collusion findings secret for several months.
In more recent news, Sidney Moreland – the arbitrator overseeing non-injury grievance cases, including the Tretter one – has been fired by the NFLPA. The move (first reported by Sportico’s Michael McCann and Eben Novy-Williams) is permitted by the CBA, which allows the league or union to dismiss arbitrators since they are jointly appointed. Per the report, the decision to fire Moreland was not related to the recent revelations about the Tretter case.
Nevertheless, this latest news adds further to the attention the NFLPA has received recently. The union will no doubt remain in the spotlight as its search for a new executive director unfolds in the wake of Lloyd Howell‘s resignation. Tretter is still in place as a key figure in the organization, although it remains to be seen at this point if he will emerge as a candidate to replace Howell.
What a sh1tshow this is becoming.
Ok, I’m stupid. How does faking an injury help a player’s bargaining position?
Player agent: “If you sign my client you get a great bargain because you’re getting 2 concussions for the price of one”.
If they held out they could be fined and unable to reach free agency. An injured player does not need to practice, or report, and his contract would expire as if he were playing on it.
“If you dont extend my contract and give me a raise, my ankle now hurts after having surgery on it 6 months ago” – Jonathan Taylor
Not stupid. Reasonable question. There’s some ambiguity to the tactic’s effectiveness, which makes the reasoning not so evident.
Basically, it’s the equivalent of a sick-out. The employees protest being underpaid by taking an action- like faking sickness- and basically working less and, thus, earning more per hour (or game, in this instance). The idea of “if you’re going to pay us less, then we’re going to give you less value for that low pay.” There’s also an element of bringing clarity to a situation when a group of the same individuals, providing the same skill set, withholding it en masse, and show the team owners what they’re losing by not paying a fair amount.
It’s not always an effective strategy, but it does get the point across. And since NFL players by and large are faced with the short-end of a power imbalance with the team owners, they’re kind of limited on options to begin with.
But I also agree with a counter-argument that it’s an especially unwise tactic in pro sports- and especially the NFL- where being viewed as injury-prone can undercut earning power.
But considering how badly running backs were getting hosed lately, they may have felt like they little to lose.
There’s also the element of:
“Im not going to risk actually getting hurt while on this one year tag, risking losing out on the possibility of a long term contract, so I’ll pretend to be hurt as long as possible. I’ll play just enough to show i still got it.”
As I recall, Jerome Bettis admitted to feigning injury to remain with Steelers back near the twilight of his career.
Never Free from Litigation
If Tretter gets to take over for Thurston Howell III
(the Executive Director he basically forced in)
it will be the perfect cherry on top of this corruption cake…..
♫ Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
Cuz it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again
Oh noooooooooooooooooo! ♫
The NFL’s equal team revenue sharing, where the players are guaranteed to receive their share of the revenue, is working well for the players. Every team has around $279m per club to spend on players. In comparison, there are only 4(and 2 just slightly over) mlb teams who spend more than that on their entire team payroll, even though they play 162 regular games vs 17, and many more playoff games.
The RB’s are not getting more $ because of the rule changes over the past 20 years to greatly encourage passing. Plus, the new super touchy safety rules on QB’s has made it easier for QB’s to sit back and throw the ball. Just look at the QB ratings for the best QB’s in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. Elite QB’s like Dan Marino and Brett Favre had a career QB rating of 86. Dan Fouts 80. Today, QB’s anywhere close to that rating would have their team’s looking to replace them. Because of this, the QB’s WR’s, and the players who can beat affect the QB, pass rushers, are getting all the big $. If the rules don’t change, the salary discrepancy will only continue to widen.