The NFL’s push toward an 18 game regular season has a new person on the other side of the table, and he is not pretending the answer is a formality.

J.C. Tretter, recently elected executive director of the NFL Players Association, said the union is not prepared to agree to an 18 game schedule and will not begin discussions simply because the league wants to move quickly. Tretter was direct about what happens if NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and owners come calling.

“They could call me tomorrow and ask,” Tretter said. “The answer is no. We’re not in a position to do that.”

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The core leverage point is written into the current labor deal. The NFL cannot add regular season games without NFLPA approval, even though the collective bargaining agreement runs through the 2030 season. The league expanded to 17 games in 2021, and owners have been vocal about exploring the next step, which has widely been framed as an eventual move to 18 regular season games with a reduced preseason.

However, Tretter’s message was not just “no,” but rather more a “not yet.”

“We’re not going to start (negotiating) until we’re ready to start, because if we start before we’re ready, we’re not going to succeed in our job,” Tretter said, adding, “…I’m sure they’ll ask. I’m sure they’ll poke around. That’s not surprising. They’ve been kind of poking around publicly, at least for a while, but that’s fine. It’s their job to ask. Our job is to be ready. Our job is to be prepared, and our job is to succeed. That’s what we’re focused on doing.”

The timing matters because the league is already leaving breadcrumbs about how an expanded schedule could reshape the calendar. One topic that has surfaced in recent coverage is the uncertainty around scheduling Super Bowl LXII in February 2028, with the underlying issue being that any future expansion would ripple through the postseason and major event dates.

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What Tretter is signaling is that if the NFL wants 18 games as soon as 2027, it will have to pay for it in terms players care about, and it will have to do it on the union’s timeline. Past discussions around an 18 game season have included the possibility of adding another bye week and further reducing preseason games, concepts that have been treated as common bargaining chips whenever the topic resurfaces.

For now, the practical takeaway is simple: owners may view 18 games as a “when,” but the NFLPA’s new executive director is treating it as a negotiation that starts only when the union decides it is ready, and not before.

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