Cleveland Browns guard Joel Bitonio believes that his former teammate with the Browns and current president of the NFL Players Association JC Tretter is getting the Colin Kaepernick treatment. With the 2022 NFL season just a few weeks from kicking off and the offseason about to enter the second week of the preseason, Tretter conspicuously remains a free agent, and Bitonio thinks that's mainly because of Tretter's vocal stance on issues within the league, per May Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer (h/t Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk).

“When you have a guy that’s top-five, top-10 at center in the league and he’s not on a roster, you know, and he’s the NFLPA president and maybe some of the owners don’t appreciate what he brings to the table on certain topics when he’s trying to protect player safety and things of that nature, it seems a little suspicious to me.”

However, Bitonio also made it clear that his take was mere conjecture and that he really had no inside knowledge of the situation regarding JC Tretter's offseason negotiations.

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“But, again, I don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors. I don’t know what his conversations have been with teams and stuff, but just from an outside perspective usually players that are close to the top of their game get picked up. Teams want to win in this league. So it’s an interesting topic, for sure.”

The 31-year-old JC Tretter was released by the Browns in March 2022 in order to make over $8 million in cap space that would later help pave the way for Cleveland to acquire and sign quarterback Deshaun Watson to a huge extension deal.