mentioned that topic<\/a> during the press conference following the owners\u2019 May 2025 meetings.<\/p>\n\u201cWe did spend time today talking, at length, about areas of our Collective Bargaining Agreement that we want to focus on,\u201d Goodell said at the time. \u201cThe two areas that we spent time on were really the cap system itself, the integrity of that system, how\u2019s it working, where do we need to address that in the context of collective bargaining, when that does happen. That was a very lengthy discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n
So the NFLPA knows what the NFL wants. Tretter is in the process of figuring out what his constituents want.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been clear to the guys, this can\u2019t all be based around what the league wants,\u201d Tretter told Breer. \u201cLike, we as players need to figure out what we want, period. And I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve done a good job of truly knowing exactly what our guys want. My job is to go and figure that out and make sure I know, we know, and player leadership knows exactly where our membership stands, both as an entire group but also as individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n
So when will Tretter be ready to talk turkey?<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, there\u2019s just no timeline for when we would be ready,\u201d Tretter told Breer. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not going to let an artificial timeline dictate that because in the end we do have a deal for another five years. So we have runway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Technically, they have five years of runway. The current CBA expires in March 2031.<\/p>\n
Still, the league wants to get an expanded season and international footprint in place. The sooner that happens, the more money the players will make.<\/p>\n
And here\u2019s the inescapable reality. What the NFL wants and what the players want ultimately will be influenced by how determined each side is to achieve their goals. History tells us the league is far more willing to shut it down than the players are.<\/p>\n
The clear imbalance in the willingness to use the nuclear option hovers over everything. For now, then, the effort to find out what the players want should include an effort to get them to understand that they may have to be ready to take a lockout \u2014 or initiate a strike \u2014 to get there.<\/p>\n
Given the realities of the industry, most of the players who are currently on NFL rosters won\u2019t be when the CBA expires. Thus, the messaging should extend to college players who are and will be earning NIL money over the next five seasons. <\/p>\n
They need to be advised to start squirreling some of that cash away in the event that, come 2031, the members of the union will be ready to call the billionaires\u2019 bluff and accept as much as a full season of not playing football, and not getting paid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NFL believes that turmoil within the NFL Players Association has left the league\u2019s business (as one source…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-719290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}