Cleveland Browns Tretter has been effective in negotiating NFL Covid response

The Cleveland Browns J.C. Tretter helped in COVID talks

If you thought the concern over player safety was something that Cleveland Browns center and NFL Players Association president J.C. Tretter made up, that is not the case. Sanity appears to be prevailing, as the NFL has reached agreement adopting key Tretter proposals, including daily testing and the elimination of the preseason.

Several prominent players weighed in, including Russell Wilson, Patrick Mahomes, and Myles Garrett.  Fan reaction on Twitter is, as you can imagine, was not completely positive, sometimes dominated by knuckleheaded ideas that football players should tough it out no matter what the consequences, and simply risk their lives and forego millions of dollars for the sake of entertaining deserving fans.

Early on there were some hardliners among the owners who apparently suggested that the players should simply be put on the Non-Football Injury (NFI) list and the teams would simply not pay them, according to Dan Graziano of ESPN.

Well, that was just crazy.

We don’t know which owner(s) came up with that gem. Hopefully, it was made up by an enterprising sportswriter because it really does define an additional level of dumb.

This is common sense that reasonable measures would be taken.

Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com  had indicated early on that the NFL would indeed pay its players, and will cover COVID as a special case so that the team will not be charged for a roster space. The player would be permitted to return to the active roster in as little as three weeks.  It apparently is not a done deal, but that is the direction that is moving.

Honestly, you can’t punish people by docking their pay for getting COVID. Most sensible owners realize that.