In the hours after the NFL Players Association elected Lloyd Howell to become the union’s fourth executive director in 2023, Howell and then-NFLPA president JC Tretter conducted a press conference.
On Tuesday, there was no press conference following the election of Tretter as the NFLPA’s fifth executive director. Per the union, there will be no introductory press conference.
The absence of a Q&A with reporters will leave several questions unanswered, starting with Tretter’s decision to accept a job that, as of July 2025, he had no interest in pursuing.
And that’s just the most obvious question. Other lines of inquiry would potentially focus on the turmoil that engulfed the union during Tretter’s time as chief strategy officer, culminating in the abrupt resignation of Howell amid numerous controversies. The avalanche started with Pablo Torre’s discovery of a hidden collusion ruling that, while a loss for the NFLPA on the surface, included a finding that the league invited teams to collectively refuse to give veteran players guaranteed contracts in the aftermath of the five-year, fully-guaranteed Deshaun Watson deal.
The NFLPA also lost a grievance last year regarding Tretter’s public suggestion that running backs who are unhappy with their contracts should feign injuries.
Then there’s the NFL’s apparent plan to commence Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations quickly, with the ultimate goal of expanding the regular season to 18 games as soon as 2027.
In 2023, Tretter presided over an executive director selection process based on extreme secrecy. Now that Tretter is the executive director, there’s even less transparency in the aftermath of the election than there was the last time around.
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