JC Tretter resigns from NFL Players Association

First, Lloyd Howell. Now, JC Tretter.

In a lengthy interview that was posted earlier this hour, Tretter tells Jonathan Jones of CBSSports.com that Tretter is resigning from the NFL Players Association. The former union president had returned last year, as the NFLPA’s chief strategy officer.

“Over the last couple days, it has gotten very, very hard for my family,” Tretter said. “And that’s something I can’t deal with. So, the short bullet points are: I have no interest in being [executive director]. I have no interest in being considered; I’ve let the executive committee know that. I’m also going to leave the NFLPA in the coming days because I don’t have anything left to give the organization.”

But Tretter was a candidate to become the interim executive director. And Pablo Torre’s reporting pointed to a broader strategy by Tretter to eventually succeed Lloyd Howell as the full-time, non-interim leader of the union.

“I want to get my story out there, and I don’t want it to look like this was sour grapes or I didn’t get the job and I wanted the job,” Tretter said. “All I want to do is tell my story and then go be with my family.”

He did indeed get his story out there. It comes off as a one-way effort from Tretter to provide his version on anything and everything, with little if any pointed questions or followup.

“I’m not resigning because what I’ve been accused of is true,” Tretter said. “I’m not resigning in disgrace. I’m resigning because this has gone too far for me and my family, and I’ve sucked it up for six weeks. And I felt like I’ve been kind of left in the wind taking shots for the best of the organization. . . .

“I got to the point this morning where I woke up and I realized, like, I am going to keep dying on this fucking sword forever of, I’ll never, ever be able to do what’s best for me. And I will always pick what’s best for the organization. And in the end, what’s the organization done for me? Like, nothing.

“I’ve been a bullet shield for six weeks for them where everything that’s been controversial, it just all dumps down on me, and I’ve had nothing to fucking do with it. And that’s when I was like, I’m done taking bullets for the [organization] on stuff I wasn’t a part of and did not do.”

Or course, he did badmouth Russell Wilson after he failed to get a fully-guaranteed deal. (Tretter says he called Wilson a “fucking loser” in a text message to former NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith.) Also, Tretter suggested that disgruntled players should fake injuries, sparking a grievance the NFLPA lost in a slam-dunk ruling.

So his hands aren’t entirely clean. Even without the application of any elbow grease as to the various positions he took in his comments to CBS.

Either way, now ends Tretter’s time with the union. Since the NFLPA didn’t previously have a chief strategy officer, it may not replace him. For now, the primary challenge becomes hiring an interim executive director.