Reports: NFL, NFLPA covered up fake injury grievance ruling
Recently, ESPN reported that the NFL and NFLPA agreed to conceal findings of a grievance filed by the players union, in which an arbitrator found that the league had encouraged its owners to engage in collusion. On July 17, Pablo Torre and Mike Florio revealed that the NFL won a different grievance ruling against the NFLPA earlier this year.
The league originally filed the grievance in September 2023 accusing the union of encouraging players to fake injuries. It came as a result of JC Tretter's comments months earlier alluding that faking injuries was a way for a player to avoid fines in contract negotiation holdouts.
NFL COLLUSION GRIEVANCE: League and players union agreed to keep arbitration findings secret, per report
Said Tretter at the time: "I think we've seen issues — now, I don't think anybody would say they were fake injuries, but we've seen players who didn't want to be where they currently are, have injuries that made them unable to practice and play, but you're not able to get fined, and you're not able to be punished for not reporting. So there are issues like that. I don't think I'm allowed to ever recommend that, at least publicly, but I think each player needs to find a way to build up leverage to try to get a fair deal. And that's really what all these guys are looking for, is to be compensated fairly."
According to Florio and Torre's reporting, a Feb. 20 decision from a non-injury grievance arbitrator gave the NFL a win following their complaint.
A statement the league wrote to Pro Football Talk read: "The Arbitrator upheld the Management Council's grievance in its entirety and found that Mr. Tretter's statements violated the CBA by improperly encouraging players to fake injury."
The statement went on to clarify that the NFL did not allege any specific player faked an injury and that the league's issue was with Tretter and the union potentially encouraging the behavior. The league alleged the NFLPA violated an article in the two parties' collective bargaining agreement that prohibits the union from, as Florio put it, "engag[ing] in de facto, individualized strikes."
Neither party disclosed the outcome of the decision publicly in the immediate aftermath of the NFL's arbitration victory.
Florio suggested in his article that the cover-up may have been the result of a behind-closed-doors agreement. If the NFLPA agreed not to publicize the findings from a collusion grievance that found the NFL encouraged owners to engage in collusion to keep down player contract values, the league would not expose their grievance win regarding fake injuries.
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