NFLPA Director JC Tretter Says New CBA, 18-Game Season Unlikely For 2027

NFLPA executive director JC Tretter was asked during a recent media appearance if a new collective bargaining agreement could be negotiated within the next year.

“I would say extremely unlikely,” Tretter said on The Rich Eisen Show. “I became president during COVID, which I think taught me to really view things in foreseeable chunks of time. As you move too far forward, there’s too many variables to deal with. I was elected in March, started April 1st. The first part of my job is making sure I understand what our members want, because this is a membership-ran institution. I will not be able to do that until throughout this season as I go and visit each of these 32 teams. So there is nothing that could be done until I talk to my guys and make sure I understand what they want and what they’re looking for.

“And then that’s also understanding, can I get everybody on the same page in that amount of time? Which is probably a difficult ask as well. So I think my first step is getting out and talking to all 2,500 members and making sure I understand what they care about, and then getting our guys to understand what we should be fighting for. And that’s gonna come from their feedback.“

The impetus for a new CBA just six years into an 11-year term is the NFL’s desire to expand the season to 18 games. More games would mean more inventory, which would change their negotiating position with broadcast partners. Those rights deals form the bulk of the $23 billion in annual revenue the NFL generates. 

The league just signed rights deals with the networks shortly after ratifying its current CBA back in 2020. The NFL can opt out of those deals early and come back to the negotiating table, which would be the play if it has an 18-game season to negotiate with.

That could happen as early as the 2027 season, as the NFL notably has not set the date for the Super Bowl that year, leaving open the possibility of an extra week. 

However, it would require buy-in from the NFLPA as a part of the collectively bargained process. Former NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell sounded quite open to the idea of revisiting the CBA. Tretter is taking a much more measured approach so far. 

“There’s gonna be a lot of work that goes on by me and the staff and then bringing that to the executive committee and bringing that to the board [of player representatives] and making sure they have a say, making sure they understand the trade-offs and what the discussions would be. So there’s a ton of work to be done before a conversation could even start happening, let alone going through an entire collective bargaining process. Those aren’t one-month discussions. This is a 500-plus-page document of clause after clause after clause that would need to be negotiated. That is a very heavy lift on that timeline to get anything done.” Tretter continued. “We have an agreement for the next five years, so I don’t even think we’re thinking of, ‘Well, how fast could we get this done?’ It’s, ‘Do we want to even have a conversation if that’s what’s going to be slid across the table to us?’ And right now we have a deal, I think we’re happy with and we’re OK with and things are operating well under and what’s the motivation to speed up a process? And I don’t think we’re looking to do that.”

The NFL’s desire to expedite a new CBA gives the NFLPA a rare bit of leverage, and there’s a lot of pressure on the union to maximize this and extract some concessions from the owners in exchange for redoing the deal before it expires. 

Tretter assured fans that there is no impending lockout, stoppage of play, or strike given that the collective bargaining agreement still has five years remaining.

“I think we’re still so far away from that,” Tretter concluded. “And it’s weird how quickly these conversations have started, and it’s because the league is interested in doing something. They’ve been clear about that. But we are still five years away from this time. That is so much time. That is over a life cycle of a player, on average. It’s longer than the average career length. So we’re still so far away from a work stoppage, a strike, a lockout that, though you’re always planning for those scenarios, that’s not just something that we’re really like diving into right now, just because we are so far into a deal with so much more runway to go before that would ever happen that I don’t think anybody should be concerned, because we have five more years of football guaranteed. There is a very long time before something would happen.”

We’ll have more on a potential 18-game season as the news is available.