The executive director of the NFL Players Association has decided to resign after just two years in his post.
Lloyd Howell announced on Thursday that he is stepping down as executive director of the NFLPA. In an official statement, Howell noted that “it’s clear that my leadership has become a distraction to the important work the NFLPA advances every day.”
Here is the full statement from Howell.
Lloyd Howell announced his resignation as the NFLPA executive director. pic.twitter.com/T89ysy127p
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) July 18, 2025
Adam Schefter of ESPN notes that Howell was not asked to resign but instead made the choice on his own.
Howell, who assumed the job in June 2023, came under scrutiny in recent weeks amid reports shared by podcaster Pablo Torre. Initially in June of this year, Torre published a 61-page ruling from independent arbitrator Christopher Droney on a 2022 lawsuit filed by the NFLPA against the NFL for alleged collusion. The lawsuit claimed that the NFL had colluded with teams to limit guaranteed contracts in violation of the CBA (a response to QB Deshaun Watson’s fully guaranteed contract with the Cleveland Browns).
In the ruling, Droney stopped short of saying that there was full-fledged collusion to depress player salaries (thereby ruling against the NFLPA). But he did find by a “clear preponderance of the evidence” that the league office had encouraged team owners to reduce future guarantees. The ruling, issued back in January, was kept secret from both the union membership and the general public … until Torre published the ruling himself on June 24. That painted Howell in a negative light due to the lack of transparency with the union’s own members and due to the questions that it created over why the ruling was kept hidden in the first place.
Then earlier this week, Torre published another report that cast further doubts over Howell’s leadership. Torre uncovered a second document kept secret from union membership, this one a ruling on a 2023 grievance by the NFL against the NFLPA about running backs supposedly faking injuries. The report also revealed that Howell, just before becoming the NFLPA executive director, had served as a paid part-time consultant for The Carlyle Group, a public equity firm approved to invest in NFL teams (with up to a 10 percent minority stake). This led to questions over a potential conflict of interest as well as over how Howell was even able to land the job in the first place.
Here is the link to Torre’s latest report on the matter.
Come for the reveal of the second ruling, starring J.C. Tretter.
— Pablo Torre (@PabloTorre) July 17, 2025
Stay for the unearthing of the video the NFLPA selectively edited, starring Lloyd Howell on private equity: https://t.co/O18176TiZc
LBS had reported on the 2023 fake-injury grievance at the time that it was initially filed. Now it looks like the fallout from that grievance was one of several factors that led to Howell finally deciding to step down from his position this week.
