CLEVELAND, Ohio (92.3 The Fan) – The Las Vegas Raiders were none too pleased when they learned their trip to Cleveland was delayed until Monday prompting a few players to take aim at Browns center and NFLPA president J.C. Tretter.
Little did they know how close they came to not even making the trip.
“I don’t think everybody was fully aware of just how close those games were to being canceled,” Tretter said Wednesday during a Zoom videoconference.
“And I don’t think everybody was fully aware that if canceled they weren’t going to get paid, both teams weren’t going to get paid.
“I think that was news to some people. And once they understood that fact, I think guys started to realize what exactly we as a union were fighting for.”
It didn’t take long for Tretter’s message to reach and resonate with the angry Raiders.
“I think the thing that people didn’t understand was I was fighting for the same thing for the Browns players as I was for the Raiders players, and that’s to get paid,” Tretter said. “That’s my job as president. I was elected by the players to represent all the players.”
In the wake of multiple COVID breakouts, including Tretter’s team – the Browns that saw nearly 30 positive tests over 10 days, the NFL ultimately postponed three games instead of cancelling them.
The Browns were bumped from Saturday afternoon to Monday where they lost to the Raiders 16-14. The Los Angeles Rams beat Seattle 20-10 and the Philadelphia Eagles knocked off the Washington Football Team 27-17 Tuesday night after both games were moved from Sunday.
Tretter was not focused on competitive balance or roster composition for the Browns or any of the teams dealing with an outbreak when pushing the league office to postpone games.
“They were going to be canceled,” Tretter said. “I don’t worry about standings. I don’t worry about record. I don’t worry about those things as president. I worry about making sure our guys are paid, and that was my concern.
“The issue wasn’t about how many guys we got back. Our position as a union is we fight for wages, benefits and working conditions.”
Over the last week, Tretter found himself in the middle of a difficult situation – fighting for players who wanted additional protection amid the ongoing pandemic and for those who felt they have done all that had been asked of them and desired a continued return to normalcy.
“It’s my job to sit back with all that information and find a path forward that gives everybody what they want or something they want,” Tretter said. “That’s obviously not easy in these situations where there’s no answer that gives everybody 100 percent what they want, but that’s our job as the union is representing what our players want, working with experts still to provide them the information and then executing what they ask of us. It’s not an easy job, but I think in the end, we did do what guys wanted to do.”
Tretter said the NFL was against a return to daily COVID testing and the league was against it during 2020 but the NFLPA “forced their hand” on the issue.
The compromise for the remainder of the season was less and random testing with the option for players who want to be tested daily, wear masks in team facilities and attend meetings virtually or opt out of the rest of the season.
“It’s not an easy balancing act to figure out how to go forward through,” Tretter said. “So knowing that, we tried to come up with the best past forward to provide options to everybody.”
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