Did the NFL encourage its teams to collude against guaranteed salaries? Pablo Torre and Mike Florio recently found out.
And the answer appears to be a resounding “yes.”
After Florio teased that some major news was on its way on Monday night, the payoff came on Tuesday morning in the form of a new episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out. In the episode, the show’s host explained that he and Florio had engaged in a friendly competition to uncover the arbitration ruling in the NFL Players Association’s grievance against the league regarding collusion allegations, with Torre ultimately obtaining the document first.
And although the arbiter ruled in the NFL’s favor, the document remains damning nonetheless.
As detailed in the episode and on Florio’s ProFootballTalk.com, System Arbitrator Christopher Droney wrote in his January 2025 ruling that “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.” The NFLPA’s grievance still failed, however, with Droney determining that union failed to prove by a “clear preponderance” of the evidence that the teams acted on the NFL Management Council’s advice.
According to Florio, that may merely be a matter of semantics.
“I’ve been doing this 25 years. And the unmistakable vibe that I have picked up over the years is what the Management Council says goes,” Florio said on PTFO. “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.'”
It’s also worth noting that the entire grievance stems from a 2022 owners meeting, which occurred just days after the Cleveland Browns gave Deshaun Watson an unprecedented fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million contract. Despite the nature of Watson’s deal, no similar contracts followed, including the extension that Russell Wilson signed with the Denver Broncos later that year.
Speaking of Wilson, the now-New York Giant appears to have played a significant role in why the NFLPA didn’t want this document to be made public — albeit through no fault of his own. As detailed in the episode, the evidence also revealed that NFLPA President JC Tretter “repeatedly insulted” Wilson, even referring to him as a “wuss” over his failure to secure a fully guaranteed contract from the Broncos.
“Instead of being the guy that made guaranteed contracts the norm, [Wilson’s] the guy that ruined it for everyone,” Tretter said in a text message, according to the evidence.
As the the theory goes, such comments were one of the primary reasons the NFLPA attempted to keep the ruling out of the public eye, even though it included damning findings against the NFL.
EXCLUSIVE: Did a text calling Russell Wilson a “wuss” lead to the cover-up of NFL owners colluding against players?@PabloTorre and Mike Florio (@ProFootballTalk) reveal the secret document that billionaires and union execs don’t want you to see: https://t.co/qEkxrqNmjB pic.twitter.com/40eTsaUwT3
— Pablo Torre Finds Out (@pablofindsout) June 24, 2025
Yet despite both the league and the union’s best efforts, the findings are now, in fact, public. And it’s all thanks to the buddy journalism duo of Pablo Torre and Mike Florio that we never knew we needed.