The NFL Players Association is going to need a new leader.
NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell Jr. announced his resignation Thursday evening.
‘It’s clear that my leadership has become a distraction to the important work the NFLPA advances every day. For this reason, I have informed the NFLPA Executive Committee that I am stepping down as Executive Director of the NFLPA and Chairman of the Board of NFL Players effective immediately,’ Howell said in a statement. ‘I hope this will allow the NFLPA to maintain its focus on its player members ahead of the upcoming season.’
A message was also sent to the NFLPA membership from the executive committee and was obtained by USA TODAY Sports. It read:
‘This evening, Lloyd Howell informed us that he is stepping down as Executive Director of the union. We accepted his resignation and are grateful for his service. The Board will convene as soon as possible for a meeting on next steps and will be in touch with our membership soon.’
Howell had come under intense scrutiny in recent days and weeks following the ‘Pablo Torre Finds Out’ podcast’s release of a 61-page arbitration report.
In January, Christopher Droney, an independent arbitrator, dismissed a grievance raised by the NFLPA, ruling there wasn’t sufficient evidence of collusion by NFL owners. However, the contents of his report included a finding that the NFL encouraged owners ‘to reduce guarantees in future contracts with players at the March 2022 annual meeting.’
ESPN had reported that the NFL and NFLPA made an ‘unusual confidentiality agreement’ to keep the findings of the arbitration report secret.
‘By agreeing to a confidentiality agreement, the union purposefully blocked the players from receiving crucial information about the operations of the NFL,’ attorney Peter Ginsberg said via ESPN. ‘The NFL and the union should not be conspiring together to keep important information from the players.’
ESPN reports Lloyd Howell has side job with conflict of interest
Further controversy surrounding Howell emerged on July 10.
ESPN reported that Howell, in addition to his job as head of the players’ union, was working as a ‘paid, part-time consultant for The Carlyle Group,’ a private equity firm that the NFL approved to seek minority ownership stakes in its teams. Howell had started the consulting gig months before starting his role as the NFLPA’s executive director.
He refused to step down from his role with The Carlyle Group after taking the NFLPA job, ESPN reported.
‘It would be an outrageous conflict for the head of a labor union to have an interest in a third party that is aligned with the NFL,’ NFLPA’s former lead outside counsel Jim Quinn said, via ESPN. ‘The relationship between a labor organization and the employer organization is adversarial by definition, and as a result, as a leader, you have to be absolutely clear and clean as to having no even appearance of conflict.’
A representative for The Carlyle Group told ESPN in a statement that Howell ‘had no access to information about the NFL and Carlyle process’ and that she was unaware of the union’s request he leave his consulting position.
USA TODAY Sports had also confirmed an ESPN report that the NFLPA hired law firm Wilmer Hale last month to look into Howell’s actions as the union’s executive director.
Lloyd Howell involved in previous legal controversies
Prior to Howell’s election as the union’s new executive director, he served as the chief financial officer for technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton between 2016 and 2022.
In July 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Booz Allen paid out a $377 million settlement resulting from a whistleblower lawsuit that alleged the firm had been overcharging the federal government.
The Washington Post reported that the whistleblower had notified top executives, including Howell, of the overcharging issue for months.
The NFLPA had hired Howell as its executive director just one month before the announcement of Booz Allen’s settlement.