NFLPA Names JC Tretter Executive Director
11:21pm: Tretter has been elected the new executive director, the NFLPA announced.
In a lengthy statement, Tretter said: “There are times in your life when you know that you are exactly where you’re supposed to be. That’s where I am today. I’m grateful for the trust my fellow players have placed in me, and I’m going to reward that trust with my fullest commitment to these players and chart a new course for our union. My sole goal is to build up the strength of the NFLPA.
“I understand the responsibility that comes with this role and how important it is to stand shoulder‑to‑shoulder with player leadership. This union has always played a critical role in shaping the game, and that work is as important now as it’s ever been. The NFLPA needs leadership that listens, leads with integrity, and puts players first every day. That’s exactly how I plan to lead.”
12:03pm: NFLPA representatives have assembled in San Diego. A vote on the union’s new executive director is set to take place today, something which should be a notable development on a number of fronts. 
[RELATED: Jalen Reeves-Maybin Re-Elected As NFLPA President]
Since last month, the trio of finalists for the position have been known. Interim leader David White has been in place since Lloyd Howell‘s controversy-filled tenure ended with his resignation. Former president and chief strategy officer J.C. Tretter also left the NFLPA last summer, but he is back in contention to lead the union. American Conference commissioner Tim Pernetti is the other finalist.
With the vote pending, however, it appears as though this is a two-man race. CBS Sports’ Jonathan Jones reports Tretter and White are considered the favorites. Tretter oversaw the NFLPA’s last executive director search, one which saw Howell elected over White. That decision ran against the preference of the union’s executive committee, a group which will have several new faces in place for today’s vote. A veteran of eight NFL seasons, Tretter clashed with many in the NFLPA before following Howell’s resignation with one of his own. Nevertheless, Kayln Kahler and Don Van Natta Jr. of ESPN confirm Tretter is a strong candidate.
White had lengthy labor experience prior to his NFLPA arrival, including a stint as the leader of the SAG-AFTRA union from 2009-21. His background is not in football, however, making him a much different candidate than Tretter. White has publicly spoken out about issues related to schedule expansion, international games and playing surfaces during his interim gig.
The NFLPA constitution requires its executive committee to select between two and four finalists during an executive director search. That has taken place in this case, but Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk reports some of the player reps would prefer an “expanded pool” of candidates to choose from. Both Tretter and White’s respective tenures have been the subject of criticism on various fronts, and the NFLPA in general has been weighed down by a lack of transparency regarding many of its recent actions. As Florio notes, one outcome of the vote could be White’s interim stint simply being extended to allow for more candidates to be identified and vetted.
Needless to say, the immediate future will be worth watching on this front. Negotiations on a new CBA have essentially been on hold sine Howell’s resignation, but they will no doubt pick up once his full-time replacement is elected. The stance taken by the union’s next executive director will be a key factor in talks on several issues.
In other NFLPA news, Ben Fischer of the Sports Business Journal reports longtime chief player officer Don Davis has stepped down. White confirmed the news but did cite a reason for Davis’ tenure – which began in 2010 – coming to an end at this time. Davis will be “exploring new opportunities” moving forward.
LB Jalen Reeves-Maybin Re-Elected As NFLPA President
While he’s yet to find a home in free agency, veteran linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maybin received some good news tonight as the NFL Players Association announced his re-election as NFLPA president. 
This will be Reeves-Maybin’s second term in the role after taking over in 2024. NFLPA presidents serve two-year terms and are elected by the board of player representatives from around the league. A nine-year veteran, Reeves-Maybin has spent the majority of his career as a depth linebacker and special teamer, though he did start 11 games for the Lions in 2021. He earned Pro Bowl and second-team All-Pro honors in 2023 for his play on special teams.
Reeves-Maybin’s election two years ago made him the first black NFLPA president since Dominique Foxworth served from 2012-14. His re-election makes him the first black NFLPA president to serve multiple terms since Troy Vincent did so from 2004-08. Foxworth was succeeded in 2014 by Eric Winston, who filled the role for six years before turning it over to J.C. Tretter.
Retiring from play after four years as NFLPA president, Tretter continued to work with the union as chief strategy officer and was considered a leading candidate to step in as interim executive director amid the recent controversy with former executive director Lloyd Howell, but he instead chose to resign from his position. Reeves-Maybin has also been praised for his leadership during a rocky period in the union’s history as the NFLPA has dealt with financial impropriety and a collusion coverup.
Joining Reeves-Maybin in re-election were NFLPA executive committee members Oren Burks, Cameron Heyward, Ted Karras, Case Keenum, Brandon McManus, and Thomas Morstead. The group also saw four new members elected to serve on the executive committee. Tanoh Kpassagnon, Jonathan Greenard, Harrison Phillips, and Zaire Franklin will be filling the seats left vacant by outgoing executive committee members Calais Campbell, Austin Ekeler, Ryan Kelly, and Thomas Hennessy. Kpassagnon was named treasurer.
NFLPA Names Three Finalists For Executive Director
Following the controversial tenure of Lloyd Howell as executive director of the NFL Players Association, the players’ union has been searching for a permanent replacement. Per a joint report from ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. and Kalyn Kahler, the NFLPA has narrowed its search down to three candidates: interim executive director David White, former union chief strategy officer J.C. Tretter, and commissioner of the American Conference Tim Pernetti.
Howell resigned last summer after reports emerged that he had charged strip club visits to the union, worked part-time for a private equity firm seeking minority ownership in NFL franchises, and struck an agreement with the league not to disclose an arbitrator’s ruling indicating potential collusion between NFL owners against players. In the wake of Howell’s departure, White was elected to serve in the interim role of executive director after also being a finalist for the position when it was given to Howell.
White, formerly a CEO at an executive coaching/strategic firm and board chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, “has extensive labor experience” after having served as the leader of the SAG-AFTRA union from 2009-21. Tretter, the former Browns center and NFLPA player president for a five-year tenure, was also an option to serve as interim executive director, but he chose to withdraw his name from consideration after also resigning from his role with the union while denying any culpability in Howell’s wrongdoing. Tretter had been the leader of the search that led to the selection of Howell over White in 2023.
Pernetti is the only new name in the discussion. After leadership roles with Major League Soccer and the sports and entertainment company Endeavor, Pernetti served as the president of Florida’s athletic powerhouse high school IMG Academy. He was named the American Conference’s commissioner in June 2024. Other known candidates that didn’t make it to the final stage of the search process are former NFL cornerback and NFLPA president Domonique Foxworth, former NFL quarterback and player representative Matt Schaub, and former NFL center Jeff Saturday.
According to Mark Maske of The Washington Post, Tretter is “believed to have strong support among the players on the NFLPA’s ruling executive committee for the executive director job.” That won’t do him much good, though, as the decision will be made by a vote between the union’s 32 player representatives at the annual NFLPA meeting in San Diego next month.
Maske goes on to say that the player rep consensus may differ from the ruling executive committee, since Tretter is seen as a polarizing figure. White has typically been viewed more favorably, earning respect for having stabilized things in the wake of Howell’s departure, while Pernetti is not as well known to the players. Time will tell how things shake out as the league’s union moves closer and closer to establishing new leadership.
NFLPA Remains Averse To 18-Game Season
Many have long seen it as a foregone conclusion the NFL’s regular season will expand to 18 games. Moving from the current setup to one including an additional regular season contest (and one fewer week in the preseason) will require an agreement involving the NFL Players Association, though.
The NFLPA has previously expressed its lack of a willingness to expand the schedule further, citing a number of concerns. The turbulent events of this past summer has left the union with temporary leaders in place, something which will delay negotiations on this front. In any case, interim executive director David White recently made it clear there remains no desire on the part of the NFLPA to explore any additions to the length of the season.
Players have “no appetite” for an 18th game, White said (via CBS Sports’ Jonathan Jones). He added the issue of schedule expansion is “not casual” (h/t ESPN’s Brooke Pryor). The current CBA runs through 2030, leaving plenty of time for negotiations between the NFL and NFLPA to take place. Not much has happened since White was named interim leader of the union, and commissioner Roger Goodell said in October things would be put on pause until White’s permanent replacement is in place.
“It is not a given we’ll do that,” Goodell confirmed (via Mike Garafolo of NFL Network) when speaking about the possibility of adding an 18th game. “It’s something we want to talk about with union leadership.”
White’s stance on the matter has remained clear during his time in charge of the NFLPA. Meanwhile, union president Jalen Reeves-Maybin reiterated (via Pryor) an expanded schedule is “not something players are excited for.” Issues such as an additional bye week, roster sizes, travel for international games and playing surfaces are among those most important to the NFLPA. The willingness of the league to make concessions on at least some of those fronts will no doubt be key once formal negotiations begin.
The league’s slate of international contests has seen continued growth over several years, and at least nine games will be played outside of the United States in 2026. The NFL has a clear target in mind which would see every team play one overseas game per year as part of an 18-game schedule. There is still plenty of work to be done to ensure that will be possible, though, with a change in stance on the part of the union representing a notable hurdle.
Former NFLPA Associate General Counsel Sues Union; NFL Filed Grievance Against Union
Heather McPhee, who had been the NFL Players Association’s associate general counsel since 2009, filed suit in December against the union, former executive director Lloyd Howell, NFLPA general counsel Tom DePaso, and NFL Players, Inc. president Matt Curtin, per sports business reporter Daniel Kaplan and Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk (NFL Players, Inc. is the union’s licensing and marketing arm). The union had placed McPhee on administrative leave in August for alleged workplace “misconduct,” and she was fired on December 30, less than two weeks after she filed her lawsuit (via ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr.). 
Kaplan subsequently reported that McPhee is seeking damages of $10MM and that the union had sought to seal her complaint. Florio obtained a copy of it and notes that it contains four counts: obstruction of justice; sex discrimination; intentional infliction of emotional distress; and breach of contract.
In a full-length piece for Front Office Sports, Kaplan says McPhee was originally placed on administrative leave after she cooperated with a Department of Justice investigation into the NFLPA’s relationship with OneTeam Partners, which is a venture between major sports unions to collectively sell group licensing rights (the DOJ probe also includes the Major League Baseball Players Association). The NFLPA has four of the OneTeam Partners’ nine board seats, and McPhee’s suit addresses the OneTeam Partners’ Senior Executive Incentive Plan, the goal of which was to compensate board members affiliated with the NFLPA.
Her complaint also addresses the confidentiality agreement between the league and the union regarding the NFLPA’s recent collusion-related grievance. Regular PFR readers will remember that agreement well.
In 2022, the same year the Browns authorized the now-infamous five-year, fully-guaranteed, $230MM contract for quarterback Deshaun Watson, the NFLPA filed a grievance against the league. The grievance alleged that league owners colluded in an effort to make the Watson deal an outlier rather than have it become a precedent for future fully-guaranteed contracts for the NFL’s best players.
In January 2025, the arbitrator who heard the grievance stopped short of ruling that league owners had colluded but did state that teams were urged to restrict guarantees in player contracts. Despite that finding, which Florio classifies as a “partial victory” for the NFLPA, the union and the league agreed to keep the arbitrator’s 61-page decision entirely confidential (it was not disclosed to players either).
The union entered into such an agreement at least in part because of text messages sent by J.C. Tretter to former NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith, in which Tretter lampooned and belittled Russell Wilson for agreeing to a contract with the Broncos that was not fully-guaranteed. The league used those messages in support of its argument that no collusion took place, and Tretter – who had previously served as the NFLPA’s president and who was working as its chief strategy officer at the time – hoped to prevent them from being made public. Tretter was nonetheless considered a legitimate candidate to succeed Howell as the NFLPA’s executive director, though his role in the collusion matter and a separate grievance involving the league’s running backs – his prior remarks encouraging RBs to feign injury to improve their bargaining power helped the league win that case – triggered his July 2025 resignation.
It was only after veteran reporter Pablo Torre unearthed the arbitrator’s collusion ruling that the league elected to appeal the decision (the appeal is still pending). McPhee alleges that DePaso accused her of leaking the ruling, and that DePaso criticized her for “being emotional” when she questioned the timing of the appeal (via Florio). She goes on to say that the belated nature of the appeal harmed free agents seeking new contracts during the early stages of the 2025 league year, and she argues her placement on administrative leave was retaliatory.
While it is much too soon to speculate on the outcome of McPhee’s suit, it represents another potential black mark for the union, which has sustained a fair amount of them recently. The circumstances surrounding the Tretter and Howell resignations – Howell stepped down amid conflict-of-interest concerns and revelations of a sexual discrimination and retaliation suit that had been filed against him during his time at the Booz Allen Hamilton consulting firm, to say nothing of his role in the collision matter – do not cast the NFLPA in a positive light. Interim executive director David White and his potential successor will look to reverse that trend.
Meanwhile, Tretter is the subject of another grievance even though he is no longer affiliated with the NFLPA, as Albert Breer of SI.com details. Since 2023, the union has published “report cards” on each of the league’s 32 teams, which are designed to serve as something of an accountability check. After the union began publishing the report cards, the league sent three cease-and-desist letters to Tretter in an effort to make them stop. Those attempts were unsuccessful, and the NFL filed a grievance in August.
The report cards do appear to be having a positive effect for players. As Breer observes, five owners received grades of “D -” or worse in the most recent poll, and two of those owners (the Cardinals’ Michael Bidwill and the Patriots’ Robert Kraft) have invested tens of millions of dollars in new practice facilities. A third such owner, the Steelers’ Art Rooney II, is renovating an existing facility.
New 18-Game Season Proposal Comes With International Guarantee
Despite having signed a 10-year collective bargaining agreement in 2020, the NFL and the league’s ownership group have been pushing relentlessly for what they’ve insisted is an “inevitable” addition of an 18th game to the NFL regular season schedule. The newest update on the owners’ 18-game proposal comes with an international twist, as well. 
The NFL’s 2020 CBA expanded the regular season from 16 to 17 games, reducing the preseason from four to three games, and added the standard gameday practice squad elevation rules that allow for NFL teams to call up two taxi squad players each week to be active on a gameday roster. It also altered the postseason, bringing in a third wild-card team for each conference and eliminating the first-round bye for the No. 2 seed of each conference, creating two more games for the first round of the playoffs.
The news of a shorter preseason runup to the regular season and extra games in the regular season and playoffs brought mixed reactions from the players. While the extra games meant extra paychecks, the altered schedule brought questions of health considerations after the NFL Players Association had done so much to advocate for player safety in prior years. So, as the NFL immediately began to bang the table for the addition of an 18th game, the NFLPA and the players it represents made it clear that they were not fans of the idea.
This week, though, the newest updates came out of New England, when Patriots owner Robert Kraft appeared on 98.5 The Sports Hub and gave the crew the lowdown on the owners’ current plan. The plan, as it currently stands, is to expand the regular season from 17 to 18 games, shortening the preseason from three to two games, while also guaranteeing that each team will play an international game, expanding the international schedule to 16 games.
“I want to tell you guys that we’re going to push like the dickens now to make international (games) more important with us,” Kraft informed them. “Every team will go to 18 (regular season games) and two (preseason games) and eliminate one of the preseason games, and every team every year will play one game overseas.”
He went on to expound on what it would mean for the players, but the only topic he really touched on was money. Not offering any considerations for player health, Kraft spoke to the additional revenue that increased international presentations and additional regular season home games would bring to the league and how that would help the owners “to grow the cap and keep (their) labor happy.” As long as players and the NFLPA continue to push back on any notion of altering the existing CBA, though, the league and owners will be forced to wait until the CBA expires in 2031.
If the league and ownership is able to get a regular season expansion, though, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk claims that postseason change could, once again, follow. In each of the past two years, the final week of the regular season has featured a game in which two teams in the same division are playing for the No. 1 seed, with the losing team being forced to go on the road against a division winner with a significantly worse record. Per Florio, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and some teams have been pushing behind the scenes for teams to be seeded in the postseason regardless of division, eliminating home games for the league’s worst division-winners.
At the urging of the NFL, the Lions — one of the four teams to play in those Week 18 games — proposed the new rule, but the proposal never made it to a vote. Regardless, of the pushback from the players and NFLPA, the league and owners are going to continue working towards their 18-game goal, and Florio claims that some “in key circles” believe the postseason seeding change could tag along with the potential addition of an 18th game.
NFLPA Begins Search For Executive Director
The 2025 offseason was filled with drama for the NFL Players Association. Lloyd Howell, and later J.C. Tretter, resigned from their respective positions amid multiple scandals.
Shortly after Howell’s tenure as executive director came to an end, David White was tapped as his replacement on an interim basis. White – the runner-up to Howell in the NFLPA’s most recent selection process – has been in place since August. That will remain the case moving forward, but the union’s process of finding a permanent leader has now officially begun.
“The selection of the new executive director will be entirely player-driven and we’re committed to keeping you informed,” NFLPA President Jalen Reeves-Maybin wrote in a memo to players (via Mark Maske of the Washington Post). “The Executive Committee will oversee the search process while receiving input and direction from the Board of Player Representatives as we seek out a candidate who upholds our values, fights for our membership, and positions us strongly for future negotiations.”
The NFLPA has hired TurnkeyZRG as a search firm to assist in the process. Per Maske, White will only receive consideration for the full-time position if his candidacy is raised by the board of player reps itself. It remains to be seen if that will be the case, but in any event outside options will be explored. Reeves-Maybin’s memo emphasizes an increase in transparency relative to previous searches for a union leader. The Howell selection process was mired in secrecy, something which drew widespread criticism.
As Maske notes, there is not a consensus amongst the NFLPA’s members on the subject of whether or not the next executive director should be an ex-player. To date, the only official candidate for the position is former NFL quarterback Matt Schaub, who laid out his plans for the union this summer. Darrell Revis has made a number of public comments related to the NFLPA recently; he and Joe Briggs (who has a lengthy legal background and has served in various roles within the union) are names to watch as well.
No firm timeline is in place for a formal hire to be made by the NFLPA, but Tom Pelissero of NFL Network notes there is a belief that March is being targeted for a full-time leader to be in place. That would allow for new union leadership to be installed in time for the annual league meetings. Talks on a new CBA – which will include discussions on, among other things, expanding the schedule to 18 games, are on the horizon. A key factor in negotiations on that front and others will of course be the NFLPA’s organizational setup, including the identity of its next full-time executive director.
18-Game Season ‘Not Inevitable’
After taking position as the interim executive director of the NFL Players Association just over a month ago, David White gave his first interview earlier this week, per Rob Maaddi of the Associated Press. Among other topics, White addressed the concept of an 18-game season, something the league has tried to advertise in recent years as an inevitability.
Although the NFLPA shut down the idea of an 18-game schedule when negotiating the current CBA, the NFL has continued to push for it. The conversations tend to be carried out at owners meetings, where the concept is held in high regard for its profit potential. The players, though, have often expressed that there is no appetite for the change in their eyes. Regardless, the Association’s former executive director, Lloyd Howell, would routinely suggest an openness to the concept.
That’s part of the reason White was appointed as the union’s new leader. So far, White seems more than capable of voicing the players’ desires on the matter.
“The league has the right to bring any issue they want to the table and, presumably, to propose what they’re willing to give to receive what they want in negotiation, but we’ll see what happens,” White told the AP. “We haven’t talked about it yet, and it certainly is not inevitable and should not be presented as such.”
While the economic benefits of an extra game are obvious to the players, player safety concerns require further discussion into factors such as additional bye weeks, limits on international travel, restrictions on roster size, and much more. It may even be a chore to get to any such concessions, considering many players in the league were opposed to the change that brought a 17th game.
Not to mention, adding another game to the NFL schedule would require a change to the current CBA, since the agreement doesn’t expire until March 2031. Any such changes would require negotiation with the NFLPA, in which the league owners would likely need to offer some sort of incentive to edit the agreement at all.
White told the AP that, in his first month, he had attended a productive meeting with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in New York. He called the meeting “a very good start” to their relationship and ensured an agreement that both sides would have an “open and respectful” line of communication.
NFLPA Applied ‘Lessons Learned’ From Lloyd Howell Fallout To Hiring Of David White
New NFLPA executive director David White is trying to avoid some of the pitfalls that plagued his predecessor, Lloyd Howell, who resigned earlier this year amid a series of controversies.
After Howell faced allegations of a conflict of interest for his work for a consulting firm with an interest in acquiring an NFL team, White is stepping away from his own firm, 3CG Ventures. A notice on 3CG Venture’s website says that they have “temporarily paused all client activity.” White is also resigning from the boards of other companies, according to Mark Maske of The Washington Post.
The union’s hiring process also “incorporated lessons learned” from previous selection, especially the decision to install Howell as executive director in 2023, according to a union spokesperson. White was a finalist for the position in 2023 and was the preferred choice of the NFLPA executive committee. This time, players led interviews and vetting of candidates with more time to consider their decsiion.
“The process to determine the interim executive director did not mirror past executive director elections,” the spokesperson said (via Maske).
The union also reviewed White’s tenure as former national executive director for the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). Among the relevant issues was an accusation of misusing expense accounts, but it was later retracted. Howell faced similar accusations prior to his resignation.
One of the NFLPA’s early moves under White was to put associate general counsel Heather McPhee on administrative leave after multiple complaints to human resources, per ESPN’s Don Natta Jr. and Jeff Passan. The ongoing federal probe into the union’s finances began after McPhee raised the issue internally. She has been at the NFLPA since 2009 and was a vocal critic of Howell.
Matt Schaub Announces Candidacy For NFLPA’s Executive Director Position
The first official candidate for the NFLPA’s full-time executive director position has emerged. A familiar face is once again showing interest in the gig. 
Former quarterback Matt Schaub detailed in a lengthy Go Long piece (written alongside Jason Cole) his decision to pursue the full-time leadership position. David White – the runner-up to Lloyd Howell in the 2023 selection process – is currently in place on an interim basis. It remains to be seen if he will look to secure the full-time gig. In either case, Schaub will be a candidate worth watching.
The 17-year veteran made it clear in 2022 (not long after his retirement) he was interested in taking over from DeMaurice Smith. Schaub was not a finalist that time around, with only Howell and White in place for the final vote in 2023. Howell’s tenure came to an abrupt end this summer in the wake of numerous scandals. The union lost another veteran leader shortly thereafter once J.C. Tretter resigned. Stability in the short term but also a clear vision on priorities for upcoming CBA talks represent major priorities for the union at this point.
“It is important for players to know who truly wants the job and why,” Schaub’s announcement reads in part. “More importantly, players need to hear as many ideas as possible. The 2023 NFLPA executive director search, after which Howell was elected, was done in almost complete secrecy and the results are the current disaster. This election process needs to be out in the open, argued, debated, questioned, and thoroughly challenged.”
Schaub noted the difference in the union’s direction following Gene Upshaw‘s death in 2008 (that is, the shift from a former player to personnel with experience outside the game in the years since his passing). The 44-year-old’s announcement calls on a return to ex-players being relied on to lead the NFLPA. It also includes a number of suggestions for union reforms in terms of structure and operation and notes how Schaub has relied on a 10-man team to further educate him on NFLPA and CBA matters since 2023.
Last week, Hall of Fame corner Darrelle Revis along with Joe Briggs (who has a lengthy legal background and experience in various union roles) were named as potential candidates for the executive director role. It is unclear at this point if either or both of them will throw their hats into the ring. It is now known, however, that Schaub is in the early running.