PTFO Exclusive: The NFL's Secret Collusion Case, Revealed
01:11:03 Share

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Isn't the existence of the management council in and of itself per se collusive activity? The mere existence of it is collusive activity in my view. Right after this ad.

At GMC, ignorance is the furthest thing from bliss. Bliss is research, testing, testing the testing, until it results in not just one truck, but a whole lineup.

The 2025 GMC Sierra lineup featuring the Sierra 1500, Heavy Duty, and EV. Because true bliss is removing every shadow from every doubt. We are professional grade. Visit GMC.com to learn more. I think you're on mute. Workday starting to sound the same? I think you're on mute. Find something that sounds better for your career on LinkedIn.

I'm vibrating with excitement about this, Mike Florio. Hello. For those who can't...

See this? This fluttering sound is 61 pages of a secret document.

That makes me want to dive right in and not even give your bio, Mike. My bio doesn't matter. I just want to say this. One of my major objectives in everything I do in this space is to find out the things they don't want us to know. There is very little of the they don't want us to know journalism that goes on in sports media. And this is something I can tell you, Pablo, with a high degree of certainty.

They do not want us to know. And I applaud you. A legitimate, not a sarcastic golf clap. This is a real applause. I'd stand up if I was wearing pants and say, congratulations, you did it.

This document, which I will wave again in front of the camera for a second here, is something that you have been calling for. You've been asking for someone to investigate, even begging, it seems like. Can someone please find out what is in this thing? And now I can say for everybody that, yes, we have it. Yes, Mike Florio and I have both reviewed it. Mike, you've read this thing. Yes, we can clarify that too. Twice.

Twice. I love it. I love it. And so I just need to tease a bit of the detail here, which is that the core of this document involves a closed door hearing held over 10 days in July and August of 2024, close to a year ago now, that featured witness testimony from the following people.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray, current Giants quarterback Russell Wilson, former NFLPA president J.C. Tretter, former NFLPA executive director DeMora Smith, as well as the billionaire owners of the Giants, the Browns, the Cardinals, the Broncos, the Ravens, the Patriots, the Falcons, and the Chargers. Which is to say, have you ever seen a document like this before?

No, that's 25% of the league's owners testifying in that hearing. I can't overstate how difficult it has been. I have no idea how you did it. I exhausted every resource available to me to try to get this thing. We teamed up a few weeks ago, and we kind of created a friendly competition of let's see who can get this first. You win.

So I love a little friendly competition, especially with Mike Florio, who is the longtime attorney that's been running Pro Football Talk, the preeminent online clearinghouse for NFL news for a quarter century now. And this secret document is the story of the National Football League Players Association versus the National Football League, a case brought by the union before an independent judicial arbitrator.

And it is rooted in a defining power imbalance in American sports. Because in the NFL, unlike the NBA and NHL and MLB, NFL teams pretty much never do guaranteed contracts, even for star players. Which is why almost all of the contract numbers that you'll hear are probably fake. Like, if a team cuts a guy, they don't have to pay the full value of that deal that they announced.

But what the NFLPA did in 2022 was allege that the NFL's overall aversion to guarantees was no coincidence. The union argued, in fact, that it was the product of collusion, meaning that billionaire team owners had illegally conspired with the league office against almost 600 veteran players. And early in this document, it turns out,

We are pointed to a closed-door meeting that the NFL held in March 2022 and what subsequently happened to three star quarterbacks in particular.

Lamar Jackson, first and foremost, Kyler Murray, and Russell Wilson, none of whom received fully guaranteed contracts. And you mentioned the almost 600. At some point during this litigation, this collusion grievance that was filed under the auspices of Article 17 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, it went from three quarterbacks to 594 players. And that's important because, number one, I didn't know that. I hadn't heard that. I

I thought it was three quarterbacks. You take 594 players, and if there's ultimately a finding of collusion, the damages would have been in the billions if they had won this. But the union did not win this. To be clear, no damages ultimately were awarded, which is also more or less all the public has ever heard about this case until today.

That's a pretty impressive summary of something that has many tentacles, many ramifications, many allegations, many truths, and I think many still unanswered questions as to why. Why was it a secret? Why don't they want us to talk about it? And everybody involved has, I think, an answer to that question of why. Yes, and so we're going to find out today, Mike, Florio, the two of us,

Why? Why the f***? Why the f*** is any of this happening? So, Mike, you may recall, you specifically will recall this vividly, what happened in March of 2022, which is where this story begins. Because that is when the Cleveland Browns signed one of the most talented young quarterbacks at the time in the NFL.

a guy by the name of Deshaun Watson, to a record-breaking contract. This is a five-year, $230 million deal. And this was despite the fact that Watson, of course, was notoriously enmeshed in dozens of civil lawsuits having to do with sexual misconduct, allegedly stemming from his behavior with massage therapists. And that part, that headline, that's what most sports fans grappled with at the time. That's what I was focused on, is that part of this. But

Inside and around the NFL, Mike, the reaction was different. They had a different lead story. Because it was an unprecedented guaranteed contract that covered five full years at then market level, $46 million per year, fully guaranteed every single penny that had never been done before in the National Football League. When you compare what they gave up financially, draft picks to what they've gotten out of it,

And you throw on top of it the headache it's created.

as will be evidenced by our conversation today, worst transaction, not hyperbole, worst transaction in NFL history. Yes. To quote the owner of the Falcons, Arthur Blank, at the time, quote, the fact that it's $80 million above the highest contract ever given guaranteed in the history of the league that's 102 years old says a lot. Whether or not most teams in the NFL or any other team would have committed to that, quote,

I don't know. End quote. They gave this fully guaranteed contract after two separate CBA negotiations in 2011 and 2020. And this is in that document as well, where the NFLPA's position was they want all contracts to be fully guaranteed. The NFLPA fought for that in both of those negotiations and did not get it. And...

The Browns' ownership voluntarily gave the thing that the league had collectively fought off. Now we get to the evidence, right? The evidence for these allegations. And this stuff, which is revealed for the first time clearly in this document, originated with that meeting of NFL owners in 2022. But to just walk people who are not lawyers through what happens here is that the arbitrator, this is an arbitration case, the arbitrator

decided to initiate one of the most terrifying legal processes known to mankind, the thing that everyone fears when it comes to why or why not we should get into any of this litigation. Because that process, Mike, is known as what? Expedited discovery.

allowing the NFLPA to examine records and notes and slides for presentations and emails and texts. And it is an exhaustive process. And Pablo, I know from my 18 years of practicing law, you have to have a level of discipline and focus as you are looking at page after page after page, because you never know where the needle will be in the haystack. And

Bottom line, there were some needles in the haystack that the NFL delivered to the NFLPA. And this part takes us to the NFL's big annual meeting in Palm Beach, Florida in March 2022, a very crucial month in this story, as we'll see.

Everyone's there. All of the coaches, all of the general managers, all of the owners, executives with the teams, executives with the league, media is there. Agents are there. Making it kind of like an Illuminati gathering that also has limited press availability.

which is how a Ravens Beat reporter who was there to cover the looming Lamar Jackson negotiations got a quote from the team's owner, Steve Bishotti, about the Watson trade that had just gone down literal days before. And that quote

promptly got read on the local news. It's like, damn, I wish they hadn't guaranteed the whole contract. I don't know that he should have been the first guy to get a fully guaranteed contract. To me, that's something that is groundbreaking and it'll make negotiations harder with others, including Lamar Jackson. But it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to play the game. You know, we shall see.

But what I didn't know until reading this 61-page document is that the very same day that Steve Bishotti gave that quote in Palm Beach, he had also attended a presentation. A secret slideshow presentation from a shadowy but extremely important organization known as the NFL MC. The NFL MC is the NFL Management Council, and that is the group that

ostensibly provides advice and suggestions to the 32 teams on how to potentially weather these storms, whether they be temporary or permanent shifts in the way business is being done. But at all times, at all times, they emphasize it's up to the individual teams to make their own decisions. That's what they say. Now, Pablo, I've been doing this 25 years now.

And the unmistakable vibe that I have picked up over the years is what the management council says goes. And when they give you a suggestion, they're not really giving you a suggestion. They're telling you this is how business gets done.

And what the expedited discovery would reveal here is that after the Deshaun Watson deal was signed, Commissioner Roger Goodell himself began emailing his general counsel, Jeff Pash, about specific notes that the NFL emcees 45 minute presentation to all 32 owners should make sure to hit. I just want to take you inside the room here for a second. You can imagine it because imagine you're going into a presentation and

Your bosses, in some regard, the people who are at the front of the room, have slides. There's a PowerPoint deck. And these notes, these notes that have been massaged and edited and deliberated upon by Roger Goodell and his general counsel that have been written into the slides themselves are the things that they would like the presenters to verbally relay. For instance, slide 17, quote,

If guarantees continue to grow in both amount and number of players, then there's a risk that they become the norm in contracts, regardless of player quality. That not only has the potential to hinder roster management, but set a market standard that will be difficult to walk back. Of course, all clubs must make their own decisions, but continuing these trends can handcuff a club in the future, end quote. What we're seeing is the effort

to send a very clear message to the 32 teams as to how the NFL, through the NFL Management Council, wants business to be done. When you do a five-year, $230 million fully guaranteed contract, that's the canary in the coal mine. That's the threat to upend indirectly. The thing that the NFL has been holding the line on in CBA talks, oh, wait a minute.

We've fought them off in their effort to get fully guaranteed contracts, and they're just giving it away? We can't have that. And that, I think, is the gist of an attempt by the league to engineer a collusive arrangement among the 32 teams by saying to them, hey, guys, you better stop this or we're going to have a problem.

And now, by the way, we mentioned that Robert Kraft, owner of the Patriots, who is a member of the NFL MC's executive council, he was asked about this by the investigators. And Kraft testified, quote, he did not recall talking about the growth of signing bonuses and guarantees at the owners meeting. End quote. Falcons owner Arthur Blank testified that he did hear it.

But that, quote, hearing the presentation did not cause him to reduce guarantees for his team, end quote. Meanwhile, John Mara, the owner of the Giants, testified, quote, just the thought of me calling Jerry Jones or somebody and asking him not to guarantee Dak Prescott's contract or somebody else's contract, he would laugh at me.

Among other choice words, I'm sure. Just the whole notion is ridiculous. And the thought that I'm going to be influenced by what another owner is saying to me is just absurd. End quote.

If you look at John Mara's quote, and he has been the president of the NFL Management Council Executive Committee for years, why are you bothering to try to herd the cats if your position is, I have no interest in trying to herd my competitive cats, right? It should be 32 businesses, every man and woman for himself, running their own business with no coordination, no communication. Here's the CBA. It's for you to figure it out.

So when I see that merit quote, it makes me say, why? Why have a management council if your position is, well, I'm not here to tell other owners what to do. That's what the management council does, Pablo. Isn't the existence of the management council in and of itself per se collusive activity? The mere existence of it is collusive activity in my view.

Well, no, Mike, it's guidance. This is merely a suggestion. This is merely... Wait, it's only a suggestion. It's only just information. Every team has the ability to make any decision it wants. But the arbitrator, to defer to him, right? Because you're you, I'm me. Listen to the arbitrator. The arbitrator, citing even more presentation notes uncovered in this expedited discovery, reached a clear conclusion about this.

Because what he says is, quote, the NFL emcees message was not purely educational and informational as the NFL contents. It unmistakably encouraged the owners to reduce the trend of increasing player guarantees, end quote. And I will also further note that

that Roger Goodell had said in that email I was referring to with his general counsel, Jeff Pash, that when it comes to the rise of guaranteed contracts for star players, there was, quote, a big concern, end quote. I want to further quote from this, Mike. Goodell says, quote, if we wait to see how it falls, it will be too late to counter.

The things that were said on those slides, the things that were shared at that meeting were the effort to get the teams to pick up the fire extinguisher and not sit there with a cup of coffee and say, this is fine. It's the fire dog meat. This is fine. This is fine. The Deshaun Watson contract created the fire dog meat. I also want to quote another conclusion that the arbitrator drew. Quote,

There is little question that the NFL Management Council, with the blessing of the commissioner, encouraged the 32 NFL clubs to reduce guarantees in veterans' contracts at the March 2022 Annual Owners Meeting, end quote. And now I will maybe draw perhaps, hopefully, an obvious thought. And this was articulated to me by a union source. Quote,

This is almost like the Holy Grail for the union. Here's 61 pages of gory details about how the league really works thanks to an independent judicial arbitrator. You should be screaming about this from the high heavens. End quote. And that really leads to the why.

Why would the union keep it quiet? Why would you not want to trumpet this outcome to the world? Why would you not want to let the world know we caught them with their hand in the cookie jar? We caught them. They just didn't eat the cookies, supposedly. Well, this is where I want to clarify, right? So what the union source is saying is that for a long time, people have speculated. Mike Florio has speculated. This is what I think it's like back there.

But now we actually see in 4K quality what's actually happening. And so what the arbitrator, Christopher Droney, says, again, in fairness to the NFL and the legalese that we're dissecting here, what the arbitrator says is that he did not find evidence that the NFL MC presentation explicitly asked the clubs to, quote, join together in an agreement to restrict the growth of guaranteed salaries and bonuses, end quote. The arbitrator also said

would not find evidence for the overall economic damages that the union was claiming as referenced, right? The almost 600 players who had received partial guarantees instead of full guarantees. The NFLPA's arbitration demand for that reason was dismissed by the arbitrator in the end, avoiding that almost mind-blowing financial penalty that we were talking about. But all of this brings us back to the question that drove us together.

And that has been driving you crazy. And the answer to the question of why was this document suppressed? Why was this document suppressed? It's not merely the story of the NFL and how it operates. Because what we have found out is that the entity that did not want anyone else to see this 61-page document, maybe most desperately of all, happens to be the union that filed it in the first place.

Why does the United States pay higher drug prices than other countries? Because America's the only country in the world where 340B hospitals mark up drug prices and PBM middlemen charge billions in hidden fees. Meanwhile, Americans subsidize the research and development for new cures. Other countries benefit, but don't pay their fair share.

Crack down on the middlemen. End the free-riding. Lower drug prices. Go to balancethescales.org to learn more. Paid for by Pharma.

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Knowing you could be saving money for the things you really want is a great feeling. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state.

So we're going to get back to our 61-page map here and the three-star quarterbacks and the secret texts and emails and communications in just a bit. But to get there, I first got to explain what March 2022 was like at the other end of this power dynamic. Because in March 2022, the conspicuously ambitious player who had just been elected to his second term as president of the NFLPA was J.C. Tretter.

the starting center for the Cleveland Browns who had made the NFL out of Cornell University's highly respected School of Industrial and Labor Relations. And when J.C. Tretter got elected to his first term in 2020, he had made his understanding of union solidarity extremely clear.

I think there's been a lot of misinformation out there and it's caused some kinds of division and some kinds of questioning. But I think when everybody's able to communicate and talk about the same issues, the facts, I think people get on the same page pretty quickly. So I think that's going to be the process is getting everybody on the same page with the facts.

But in March 2022, and this was just days after J.C. Tretter was elected to his second term as president, and just days before those pivotal league meetings in Palm Beach that we've been talking about, the Cleveland Browns cut J.C. Tretter in order to save money. Having just signed Deshaun Watson to that guaranteed contract, which kicked off this entire saga. And because you need to be an active NFL player to be union president or sit on the executive committee,

This also meant that J.C. Tretter's second term would be his last. That same month, however, there wound up being an even bigger change at the top of this union because the executive director, Demore Smith, whose job was to sit across the table from Commissioner Roger Goodell as his counterpart, was on the way out too.

DeSmith was hired in 2009, two years before a lockout that lasted the entire offseason. They needed a guy who would be, to borrow a phrase from the godfather, a wartime consigliere, a guy who was going to come in and preside over a period of litigation and hostility and anything but calm waters. So DeMora Smith got that accomplished, took a lot of criticism for the CBA that was done, even though at the end of the day,

The owners will use the nuclear option of shutting down the full season. The players never will. At a joint press conference outside NFLPA headquarters, Smith was joined by players, owners, and league commissioner Roger Goodell. We're grateful for all the work that both parties did to make sure that we came to this day today and make sure for the fans that we can sit in here and say,

Football's back. Then we get to 2020 when the 17-game season was a reality. And I think D understood they're going to do the same thing all over again. They're going to lock us out and they're going to wait till we cry uncle. And we're ultimately going to cry uncle because we don't want to lose any game checks. So they agreed to 17 games. But it was such a close vote, it left him diminished on the back end.

So you see the discrepancy right there, a vote difference of about 60. That's how close it is. But simple majority in this particular case wins. And so the NFL now gets labor peace for the next 10 years through the 2030 season. And that's what I believe resulted in this process of de-moving on and a new executive director being hired.

And an executive director of the union, to be very clear about this, is simply put one of the most important jobs in sports. This is a multimillion dollar salary. There haven't been many of them. Right. I mean, Gene Upshot did this for a quarter century. Right. Like these are towering figures if you do it right. The person who took control of the search for D. Smith's replacement the same month that all of this was happening, by the way, the same month, March of 2022, was J.C. Tretter.

And I remember you covering this, Mike, at the time, just me reading you, because this search process for the new executive director was different. It was in complete and total secrecy. We had no idea who the candidates were. And there have been occasions where

it's looked like the debate stage in the early portion of the primary season with that many candidates involved and everyone knew who they were. And the stated reason for it was we don't want the media to try to influence our players, assuming the players are even paying attention. We found out about Lloyd Howell after it was over. So, JC, awesome. It's yours. First off, I want to congratulate Lloyd, our next executive director. Lloyd.

Lloyd Howell, the new executive director who they elected, the way they got Lloyd Howell, he actually explained it, J.C. Treader did, in a post on the union website that we found that was literally titled, Trust the Process. And J.C. Treader said, quote, all members of our search committee signed confidentiality agreements and pledged not to discuss the search with anyone outside of executive sessions, end quote.

And this was something, by the way, for people who were paying attention at the time, this was something that J.C. Tretter wound up expanding upon publicly, actually, in an interview after Lloyd Howell got elected with none other than ESPN host Pat McAfee. So this process has been really going on since March of 2022.

We went out and hired a search firm, Russell Reynolds, who was wonderful to work with. But we wanted anybody who felt like they should be the next executive director to be able to apply to put their hat in the ring. Which led Pat McAfee to, I think, a pretty reasonable follow-up question about the open casting call that J.C. Treader had described in which other candidates...

Other people were, of course, totally welcome to run. - I had not heard of it, and I'm not even talking about me in this particular case. There's probably other people that did not hear it as well. Maybe there were executives who had thought about it, or is that not the case? And I'm not saying I would run a run. I'm just saying, I feel like we're pretty dialed in to the NFL.

into everything going on with players. And we had no idea it was happening. But you guys are saying that the people that needed to know that it was happening did happen. And everybody was able to keep it tight. That's an incredibly impressive thing in 2023, JC.

Yeah. So one thing, yes, you very well could have applied. So we, in I believe it'd be November, we put out an open inbox where anybody could apply. I never heard anything about any open inbox. I never knew that they were accepting applications from anyone and everyone who was interested. And

The whole process was unlike anything I've witnessed as it relates to any organization. And this is a labor union whose financial affairs are the subject of public reporting. There's an openness that is implied in all of this that was just completely absent. And it gets back to the ultimate question that we've been asking as it relates to this document. Why? Why is everything a secret? Why all of a sudden?

Are the union leaders operating in shadow and not in sunlight? Yes. And so this strange contradiction between communication and confidentiality is just one red flag that I want to point out here because it's not even the reddest one because something else the union did in the middle of J.C. Tretter's very deliberate vetting process, the process he wants all the players to trust, is

an amendment to the Union Constitution because I went into the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive, and found the original version of the NFLPA Constitution, which has since been taken offline entirely, of course. And I draw your attention to Article 4, Part 4.04f because before the Board of Voters

needed to know the identities of the candidates for executive director that they would be voting on, quote, no later than 30 days prior to the start of the board of play representatives meeting at which the selection is scheduled to take place. End quote. Pretty standard, right? 30 days. The voters then vet. They can qualify who deserves this very important job.

But what the amended version of that same section says now, post-J.C. Treader's regime, is quite different. It says that the voters didn't need to know the names of the candidates they would be voting on until, quote, the start of the board meeting, at which the term of the sitting executive director is set to expire, end quote.

No opportunity to do any research, no opportunity in vetting, no opportunity to caucus with individual members, to just get an understanding of who these people are. The entire process was engineered, and it makes it feel like it was engineered toward us.

a specific handpicked candidate, that someone somewhere decided this is where it's going to end. How can we most effectively work backward to ensure that it ends here and hope that at the end of the day, they just accept our recommendation and that we can muscle them toward where we want them to go? And by the way, J.C. Tretter,

does seem to implicitly acknowledge that a structure in which the voters don't vet and qualify the candidates is a little peculiar.

I know some people say the board needs to vet and qualify. That's not the board's job. The board's job is to interview and pick the best. Our job was to vet and qualify as an executive committee because we were never going to have 570 hours to give to the board for them to have time to vet and qualify. That's why we put all the time in and all the work. And then in the end, the board picked an awesome new ED.

And as for that awesome, awesome new ED, the executive director that the board of voters chose after not having any real idea that said guy even existed, of course, until they entered that room to vote, we should note here that Lloyd Howell would introduce himself properly to the public at his first press conference after being handed the mic by J.C. Treader, who was the only other person at the table sitting right next to him

Thank you, JC. And I couldn't be happier and more proud and honored to be the next Executive Director of the NFLPA. You know, many of you do not know me because of my corporate experience and being sort of outside of the world of professional sports. But what I'm really excited about is the desire of the NFLPA

to tap me, select me as their leader, to really draw upon my 34 years as a corporate executive and bring all of that insight and experience to the priorities of the players' interests. And Mike, there are a couple of really important things, top line, to just know about who Lloyd Howell is and the corporate experience he was referencing there. Because from 1988 to 2022, Lloyd Howell was the chief financial officer at Booz Allen,

which is the giant consulting firm that I think works a ton, a ton with the US government. But I will also point out that Lloyd Howell, coming from not sports and not unions, isn't even the reddest flag here. Because the reddest flag, I might argue, that was sticking out of the resume of Lloyd Howell, the longtime Booz Allen CFO, is that less than a month after that press conference video we played for you, this takes us to July of 2023,

Booz Allen agreed to what one federal prosecutor declared, quote, one of the largest procurement fraud settlements in history, end quote. This was a $377 million settlement in order to resolve a set of explosive financial allegations that were brought on by a whistleblower at Booz Allen.

— Booz Allen works almost exclusively with the U.S. government. They have a ton of contracts with the Department of Defense. — She says she quickly realized the company's other contracts, some with foreign governments like Saudi Arabia, were bleeding cash. — And in order to keep the company profitable, they were passing those costs onto the U.S. government contracts. — So these private contracts, including with foreign governments, are losing money. And to cover those losses, they're taking money from the American taxpayer.

— That's right. — And it was a lot of money. — What I discovered while I was there was that they were overcharging the government by nearly $100 million a year. — And so this whistleblowing Booz Allen employee, who happens to be a principled former Marine named Sarah Feinberg,

What she did was go right to her bosses to warn them about this financial and legal and ethical disaster. Feinberg started by telling the group that fixing the issue would mean losing money. But she says she was quickly cut off by the chief financial officer who told her... I appreciate all the work you've done on this. We are not going to make it a priority this year. That must have just been devastating for you. It was very devastating for me. I called my husband right afterwards and told him I was quitting my job. Feinberg got a...

And the thing you should know here, Mike, according to an unsealed copy of Sarah Feinberg's civil complaint that we here at Poblatory Finds Out have obtained, is that the CFO who she referenced there, who caused Sarah Feinberg to quit her job in protest and officially register as a whistleblower with the U.S. government, just happened to be J.C. Treader's excellent, excellent new E.D., Lloyd Howell. An unbelievable development. And it does make you wonder,

If, as part of the vetting process, they were even aware of it, if it changed anything, if they properly went down the rabbit hole, reviewed the complaint where Lloyd Howell is directly implicated in communications with the plaintiff. Yes, how much did they know? How much did they bother to uncover? And how much were they bothered by any of this? And how much of it did they share?

after they had pre-vetted the candidates and submitted them to the Board of Player Representatives simply for interview and selection. Yes, J.C. Tretter touting over and over again how much time, 570 hours they spent vetting. This did not, apparently, make a difference, if they knew about it. But what Lloyd Howell proceeded to do after getting elected to that job, the executive director of the NFLPA, was somehow even more eyebrow-raising now given this context, Mike.

Because he didn't merely give a contract to an extremely ambitious and very strategic and now officially retired Browns offensive lineman who couldn't otherwise get paid to work for the union on the books because, of course, he couldn't be the president anymore. What Lloyd Howell did was create an executive level job that had never existed before in the history of this union. And the title was Chief Strategy Officer.

And I don't know if people are ready for this reveal, but the person he gave it to, Mike, was J.C. Tretter. When I first caught wind of that, I couldn't believe it. And when we wrote it up at PFT, and I try to maintain a good relationship with the league, with the union, sometimes it's easier than others, but I wasn't going to sugarcoat it. This felt like a quid pro quo.

And with all of the secrecy, and that is one of the consequences of operating in shadow, you invite people to ask the fair question, why are you operating in shadow? So it did feel like payback. It did feel like the mutual backscratching final act.

J.C. Tretter got him the job, and now Lloyd Howell gets J.C. Tretter a job. Right. And so the long-term strategy here, to spell it out even further, that four union sources have independently identified, is pretty simple. J.C. Tretter, the theory goes, wants to become the executive director of the NFLPA himself.

But he couldn't do it back in March of 2022, where our story had started, let's recall, because of the timing of everything, everything we've discussed. But that timing did give J.C. Treader a chance and an opportunity to install his chosen bridge candidate, right? Someone he could strategically influence, as per the job description, until it was time for J.C. Treader to fulfill his chosen destiny and win one of the biggest and most important jobs in all of sports, right?

But as for how all of this now connects us back to the 61-page document that we started with, Mike, that is after the break.

The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. The Air Force Research Laboratory is partnering with Google Cloud, using AI to accelerate defense research for air, space, and cyberspace forces. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.

To briefly recap where we are on the map.

When it came to the question, Mike, of whether NFL teams actually acted on this scheme to, quote, reverse the growth trend in guaranteed compensation, end quote, what the arbitrator chose to do was look closely at the cases of the aforementioned three star quarterbacks, Lamar Jackson, Kyler Murray, and Russell Wilson. And I should note here that according to the arbitrator, mere attendance at that March 2022 meeting in Palm Beach, quote, does not mean that the clubs gave adherence to the scheme, end quote.

But the arbitrator did still discover unprecedented and, I would say, fascinatingly hidden details about what each of those three cases were like. And I want to start with Lamar Jackson here, not just because he's the biggest name, the two-time MVP, but because we have this private text message. And now we're in the private text message zone when it comes to these stars. Because according to the document, Lamar Jackson had sent a text to Raven's general manager, Eric DaCosta. Quote,

I'm going to continue to request a, and this is in all caps, fully guaranteed contract. I understand you all don't, and that's fine. End quote. That was Lamar Jackson, who again, by the way, his mom is his agent. He's kind of representing himself, his family is.

This eventually led Lamar Jackson to refusing different contract offers from the Ravens and then requesting a trade, as NFL fans might recall, and then claiming, and this is one of my favorite details in this whole thing, amid these stalled negotiations, that, quote, the microphone on his phone was not working, making communications with Mr. DaCosta difficult, end quote. That is such a compelling statement

piece of information we never would have had. And that's the one thing I didn't expect to be in this document, mainly because I hadn't bothered to think what all would be in there. I was so obsessed with getting my hands on it. What's in it was a different issue. But insight into the

drip, drip, tick, tock of these negotiations. What was said? What was texted? What happened? And we had known that from the perspective of the Ravens,

dealing directly with Lamar Jackson at times had been challenging, dating back to the pre-draft process. And now we're hearing that Lamar Jackson was having trouble communicating to the Ravens because there was something wrong with the microphone in his phone. Yeah, is this the, I couldn't go on the date with you because I was washing my hair excuse? Was this an actual technological problem? Either way, we're getting inside of what the Ravens and Lamar were thinking to a level of just, again, transparency that raises so many more questions.

But what the arbitrator had found with the Lamar Jackson case was that, quote, only a couple teams expressed interest to the Ravens before they chose to non-exclusively franchise tag him. Again, as NFL fans will recall. And that meant that the Ravens could still match any incoming offer Lamar Jackson received. But, quote, afterwards, no team reached out directly to Mr. Jackson, end quote.

And Mike, you know, at the time, I remember thinking this. Now I continue to just wonder about it. No team reached out directly to Lamar Jackson? Two-time MVP when he's on the block? What does it feel like to get a piece of information like that? It felt like...

the encouragement to collude that was introduced in March of 2022 by the management council to the owners, it felt like a tangible example of what happens when collusion occurs. And I thought it was surprising to see the lengths to which the arbitrator went to credit the various excuses that were provided as to why teams weren't interested. He has a playing style that doesn't fit

with all teams. He gets injured a lot, which is what Arthur Blank, the owner of the Falcons, articulated.

It creates a problem with your current quarterback if you decide you're going to go all in in a pursuit of Lamar Jackson. It would be really expensive. You'd need to maybe do a fully guaranteed contract. That's another reason to not contact him. And he goes on to become the MVP. And I voted for him to be the MVP in 2024. And no one, once that franchise tag was applied, was interested. And it becomes circumstantial evidence that the message sent

during the fire dog session in March of 2022, was being acted upon. And the arbitrator in this case seemed to believe that litany of excuses that was documented in this 61-page file. And he also, therefore, ruled in favor with Steve Bishotti, the Ravens' owner, who I'll remind you had a bit of publicly volunteered insight. Damn, I wish they hadn't guaranteed the whole contract. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

But this is where I should just jump in to point out why a certain cynicism about not only Steve Bishotti's quote there, but also arbitration's overall incentive structure is also warranted here in general. And this is all negotiated in the CBA. Article 15 sets forth the various rules that apply to the selection and retention of the system arbitrator. And that's what Christopher Droney's role was.

And that role, by the way, is one person's job. The kind where there is a press release announcing that Christopher Droney, this noted retired federal judge, has been hired by the NFL and approved by the NFLPA to make a ruling on their disputes.

The way it works, there's a term that's served by the arbitrator and either side at any point can say, once this term is up, that person is out. And I hate to be this cynical, but this is the way the world works. If you're in a situation where either side can pull the plug on your job, part of your assessment beyond the facts of the case, it's the dynamics. Who wants to win this more? Who wants to win more? And if you get the impression

The union isn't nearly as zealous about this because there's been a change in executive director, but the owners are extremely intent on this. That can be just one of those factors and cause you to pick a path of least resistance and maximum security in this position that he presumably hopes to keep.

And so a through line through this entire story, in the writing of player contracts, and in the system of arbitration, and in the operations of both the union and the league, is incentives. What is everyone incentivized to care about the most, and why?

Which is all to say that, as you may recall, at least one NFL owner, Arthur Blank, owner of the Falcons, chose to keep a player named Desmond Ritter, a quarterback who currently isn't even in the league, instead of calling Lamar Jackson's purportedly busted phone and making an MVP an offer. Kyler Murray.

Okay, I want to move to him now because in March of 2022, after the Deshaun Watson contract was fully guaranteed, Kyler's agent, Eric Burkhart, sent a new proposal to the Arizona Cardinals. According to the document, quote, a fully guaranteed contract was very important to both him and Mr. Murray, and Mr. Burkhart believed Mr. Murray was better and more deserving than Mr. Watson, end quote. But after the Watson contract news and before...

The March 2022 owners meeting we've been talking about endlessly now. The owner of the Cardinals, Michael Bidwell, he shows up in the story because he had already texted his general manager about Kyler's contract saying, quote, we are going to load up this contract with so many incentives to earn the real money, end quote. And in July of 2022, after the Cardinals did exactly that, a brief but

unforgettable private text exchange between Michael Bidwell and the owner of the Los Angeles Chargers, Dean Spanos, took place according to the document. And Mike, I would just like us to read this exchange together. Let's do a table read of this, Florio, because I need you to play the role of Chargers owner, Dean Spanos, and I'll be Cardinals owner, Michael Bidwell, if you please. Congratulations on signing Murray.

Thanks, Dino. These QB deals are expensive, but we limited the fully guaranteed money and have some pretty good language. Thankfully, we have a QB that's worth paying. Your deal helps us for our quarterback next year. I think many teams will be happy with it once they have a chance to review. Cleveland really screwed things up, but I was resolved to keep the guaranteed relatively, quote, low, unquote, end scene. Like, what a gift, Dino.

It's the collusion in action. It's the encouragement that was communicated to the teams, owners, and other executives in the room in March of 2022 come to life. They're all watching this. And if we can hold the line, then we can say,

Deshaun Watson is an outlier. Deshaun Watson is an aberration. Don't ask for a five-year fully guaranteed contract because you're not getting it. And what I'm left remarking upon here, I suppose, is that regardless of the arbitrator's decision, if you were the NFLPA, I think you'd want that text exchange between Michael Bidwell and Dino to

to be public. It's just, again, how the sausage is really made. And to your point, the sausage here is not merely Kyler Murray's contract. The quarterback that Dino was referring to was his own quarterback, Justin Herbert, who signed his own deal the following summer without the guarantees they wanted with Kyler Murray as his new comp.

And think back to the quote you read from John Mara earlier about, they would laugh at me if I tried to tell them how to do business. And here they are locking arms and red rovering any and all agents or players that would try to bust through this coalition of competitors. And that's the balance they try to strike. And I say baloney on any of these vast explanations and proclamations about

why they wouldn't try to compare notes and work together because they do. And that brings us last, but certainly not least, to the story of Russell Wilson. And Mike, the part of this story here, you know, the last...

quarterback in this trio. The most interesting part to me is not that Russell Wilson had requested, quote, a seven-year fully guaranteed contract upon being traded to the Broncos from the Seahawks in 2022 and did not receive that. And thought he was getting it. And thought he was getting it. That's right.

But I don't think that's the most interesting part. And I also don't even think that the most interesting part is the fact that the new co-owner of the Broncos, Walmart CEO Greg Penner, forwarded Denver's final contract offer to Russell Wilson to two of his fellow members of Broncos ownership with the following message. Quote, if we can get this done, Broncos general manager George Payton feels very good about it for us as a franchise and the benchmark it sets versus Watson is

for the rest of the league, end quote. And again, Mike, here is the Broncos ownership celebrating what's good for them, but also for their competitors. That's so clear to me in this expedited discovery. Yeah, they want to walk through the door as an ownership group that is regarded as one that understands how to play the game.

What they see as good behavior because they belong to this larger group is fascinating. It's illuminating. It's also, again, absolutely newsworthy, I would say. But the most interesting part of all of this to me happens to be a footnote. It is a footnote in this document, specifically footnote number 25.

on page 33, if you'll open your missalette, Mike, to this area. Because in my reporting, I've been repeatedly told that this is one, quote unquote, very significant reason that explains why the f*** would the NFLPA try so hard to keep this document, fascinating, illuminating, newsworthy, so secret.

So Mike, could you please do me a favor? Read footnote 25, which has to do with a character we now know very well, NFLPA chief strategy officer, J.C. Tretter.

Mr. Tretter testified that he would not have criticized Mr. Wilson if he had known that owners had a collusive agreement to limit guaranteed compensation. And so, more detail, according to this document, this concealed arbitration ruling in a landmark NFL collusion case, it was discovered that J.C. Tretter, quote,

exchanged texts expressing frustration with Mr. Wilson's non-fully guaranteed contract. End quote. That is what Footnote 25 is tied to, J.C. Tretter's private critique of Russell Wilson, who didn't get the fully guaranteed contract that the union wanted him to get. And the answer to what J.C. Tretter said that he wanted suppressed is,

According to this theory, it's at least partly contained in a separate document, the transcript of a text exchange from July 8th, 2024, which was filed as part of this whole legal proceeding. And what I can now report is that J.C. Treader, in a series of text messages that he sent to then-Executive Director of the Union, DeMora Smith, repeatedly insulted Russell Wilson.

At one point, he used an expletive that I will not say here. J.C. Tretter also called Russell Wilson a quote-unquote wuss. And then he said of Wilson, quote, Instead of being the guy that made guaranteed contracts the norm, he's the guy that ruined it for everyone, end quote.

So I'm not like falling onto my fainting couch because someone made fun of Russell Wilson, which happens a lot on the internet, in fairness. But what four union sources believe is that J.C. Treader, this once and future leader, in his mind, of the NFLPA, didn't want to be publicly documented saying this stuff about one of his fellow members.

If J.C. Tretter is privately trashing players, the question is whether players can still trust his process, as that headline of that article he wrote for the union website had said. But is it reason, is it proper reason to keep this information from agents, players,

People who could take this and parlay it into something that would be good for all players. And if nothing else, put the league on the defensive and make them be more careful and make them not attempt to collude and not actually collude at these management council meetings. And maybe take a step back and ask themselves, should we even have a management council? Because everything we're doing here is kind of collusive. By hiding all of that,

If it's true that it was just done to protect J.C. Treader from having to deal with the blowback of saying what he said about Russell Wilson, that in and of itself to me is inexcusable if that's true. And so there's another bit here, Mike, in terms of like the...

the power play, because maybe even more pressing than what this does to the odds of J.C. Treader's, you know, future dream job is what this quote actually meant in the context of this real life collusion investigation. Because what I'm told is that the owners actually used J.C. Treader blaming Russell Wilson as evidence of non-collusion.

Because what J.C. Tretter is saying there, to be very clear about this, is that the reason Russell Wilson didn't get a fully guaranteed contract is because he's not smart enough, not strategic enough to push hard enough for it. And not because the owners were colluding against Russell Wilson or Lamar Jackson or Kyler Murray or the players themselves.

J.C. Tretter was blaming the player instead of the owners. And the owners were like, this feels like a very helpful bit of evidence for what we're trying to prove, which is that this case should be dismissed. And by the way, not unrelatedly, the case ultimately was. ♪♪

At Sierra, discover top workout gear at incredible prices, which might lead to another discovery. Your headphones haven't been connected this whole time. Awkward. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving.

Summer is coming right to your door. With Target Circle 360, get all the season go-tos at home with same-day delivery. Snacks for the pool party? Delivered. Sun lotion and towels for a beach day? Delivered. Pillows and lights to deck out the deck? That too. Delivered. Just when you want them. Summer your way, quick and easy. Join now and get all the summer fun delivered right to your home with Target Circle 360. Membership required. Subject to terms and conditions. Applies to orders over $35.

And so now we follow the map to the question we started with, which is why the cover up? A bunch of different reasons are very plausible and logical. But the larger context here, again, is that NFL owners, of course, wanted this to be suppressed because they're entering soon enough to

Another set of collective bargaining negotiations around their own Holy Grail, Mike, which is the 18th regular season game. And this is what an NFL PA source told me. Quote, if the league wants an 18th game, this document should be paying dividends for the union for the next 20 years. But the really bad part is that you have a fiduciary duty to the players. You're supposed to warn them and their agents about what the NFL has been doing. And they, the players,

the players haven't even seen this. End quote. Which brings me, Mike, to a pretty startling thing that kind of got lost when I was reading through this the first time and doing reporting around it, which is that as much as this is a story about Russell Wilson, Russell Wilson has never read this document. Lamar Jackson has never read this document. Kyler Murray has never read this document. This is not merely keeping the media away behind locked doors. This regime is failing to communicate.

with their own membership. But I think when everybody's able to communicate and talk about the same issues, the facts, I think people get on the same page pretty quickly. So I think that's going to be the process is getting everybody on the same page with the facts. And that was one of the pathways, Pablo, that I was following in my effort to win the race to the 61-page document, stirring up the camps of the individual quarterbacks involved.

to make them curious about why they didn't have this document. And one of the individuals I communicated with was like, you mean there's a written document? It's not as simple as you win, you lose. There's a written document that goes into detail, but nobody got anywhere. And before you found it,

What I was going to try to do was get an agent that has a decent collection of players to demand it so that agent can use it to best represent his or her roster of clients. I was getting nowhere. No one wanted to rattle the cage. And if they were rattling the cage, they were getting nothing from either the league or from the union. So

The fact that you got it shows it wasn't impenetrable, but it was as damn close to impenetrable as anything I've encountered in 25 years of doing this. But also, I encountered that resistance. This was double secret probation stuff from everybody. There were lots of people, Mike, who normally talk to me who were like, nope. And that, of course, that only emboldened both of us.

So this is where I do need to jump in here to say that we here at Pablo Torre finds out, did reach out to J.C. Tretter and to Lloyd Howell.

both of whom declined to comment, through the NFLPA, when we asked about both the secret arbitration hearing and also how they got their current jobs in the first place. Now, when it comes to the characterization of Treader's long-term ambition to become executive director and of his installation as chief strategy officer, as, you know, a quote-unquote quid pro quo for Howell getting his job, what a union official told us in defense of that move is, quote,

"Let's remember that the Board of Player Representatives chooses their leadership. They vote." And when we then asked the union whether Howell had been properly vetted, given the whole Booz Allen scandal, that official cited, quote unquote, "the reputable search firm that they'd hired." But as for the whole Russell Wilson thing, we also asked the union if Tretter had tried to block the release of the arbitration ruling in part because of comments he had made about players.

and a union official declined to comment. Another person, by the way, who declined to comment was my friend Dominique Foxworth, a former NFLPA president and true believer in the union, who actually was a candidate for the executive director job that Lloyd Howell ultimately received. But Dominique got eliminated midway through that confidential search process. And then, very annoyingly, he eliminated himself from my reporting process as well.

And that's about it in terms of the comments, because the union really wouldn't say much more on the record other than its official telling us, quote, "Grievance rulings are typically not released," end quote, when we pressed about why this one had not been made public. And so I guess I am just left here rewatching that video of Lloyd Howell from his introductory press conference where he makes a pledge to bring everyone together.

It's going to be my sole mission to advocate and push and lead and drive what is in the interest of the players. And just that mission, what I found out today, Mike, near the end here, is that in all of these texts and emails and discoverable details between NFL executives and NFL owners, the other word for the collusion that this arbitrator found between NFL executives and NFL owners is one that the union is, I think,

chasing. Solidarity. That is another way of seeing this story, is that the union can only dream of the solidarity that the NFL owners have been practicing behind those locked doors this entire time. And only now do we see it. But my God, this is why the power imbalance looks the way it does.

And a source with direct knowledge of the dynamics of the union told me earlier this week, this is not a good time for the union for a variety of reasons. One of which is you've got what very well may be the last contract negotiated by Roger Goodell, the last contract negotiated by Robert Kraft, the last contract negotiated by Jerry Jones, the last contract negotiated by Art Rooney II if we do another 10-year deal. And they have an opportunity now to negotiate

really reset the entire balance in their favor. And they're already talking about it. The commissioner gratuitously volunteered that during the most recent round of ownership meetings in May of this year, they spent a lot of time talking about the financial aspect of the collective bargaining agreement, the salary cap, is it working? I firmly believe that they've decided cutting the dollar in half, we're giving them too big of a piece of the pie. We can give them less money. And at the end of the day,

One side will operate the nuclear option, the other side won't. And I think the storm clouds are kind of slowly gathering. All the more reason for the union to take this finding and use it to fend off the lions. Use it as the chair that the lion tamer would use to keep them from doing what they may be planning to do. So...

In context, the idea that the interests of the union, the interests of the players would be put behind the interests of those who lead the union. Let's just see what happens now that it's out there. This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Metal Ark Media production, and I'll talk to you next time.