NFLPA President JC Tretter Says It's Time For Daily COVID Testing Again

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Cleveland Browns center JC Tretter is the president of the players' union, and he remains in favor of daily COVID-19 testing.

Tretter explained the stance of the NFL Players' Association on the organization's website.

“Since the beginning of training camp, we have been testing our vaccinated players once every 14 days,” Tretter wrote. “It has been ineffective as we’ve had significantly more incidents of transmission inside the building this year than last year.

"The NFLPA saw this coming months ago and has been advocating for a return to daily testing because it is more effective way to stop and prevent the spread of the coronavirus in our locker rooms. However, the NFL decided to move to weekly testing; and while that is a step in the right direction, it leaves us open to many of the same problems we’ve been facing.”

Some NFL players have been vaccinated -- and those who have seem to believe they would be tested less frequently. Tretter wrote that he understands such a position, but thinks his peers would be better served to play it on the safer side. Or at least the side he himself favors.

"We are all tired. No one likes that this is the world we are living in still this season. No one likes mitigation methods. But we cannot do what is easy over what is right," Tretter wrote. "We cannot do what is cheaper over what is right. We have been warned by our experts that, because of our current testing cadence, we are at more risk of missed games this season than last season.”

Tretter is obviously a respected voice in the union, but it will be interesting to see how the rest of the players respond to this. Some were already tired of the daily testing and assumed it would be gone this year.

But the Biden administration has failed to live up to campaign promises that it "will end" the virus, with reported cases surging in recent months. That has led some players believing that it may be time to ramp up testing again, with the start of the season mere days away.