Chaos in the NFLPA: Patrick Mahomes and Players Seek New Leadership After Lloyd Howell Jr.’s Resignation
On a Friday night, less than a day after the sudden resignation of Lloyd Howell Jr. as director of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), union representatives and alternates gathered on a two-hour Zoom call. The goal was to understand what happened and chart a path toward new leadership. Patrick Mahomes, the star quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs and second alternate player, took the floor to motivate a group facing the worst crisis in the 68-year history of the NFLPA. “We need to choose our leader well,” Mahomes stated, according to sources close to his comments. These words emerged amid four turbulent days for the NFLPA, with nightly calls lasting up to four hours. Internal sources revealed fear, frustration, and concern about the future of the association. These concerns intensified with the resignation of JC Tretter, former offensive lineman for the Cleveland Browns and former president of the NFLPA, who resigned as director of strategy on Sunday. Player representatives struggled to agree on a proper process for finding a leader capable of navigating a crisis that includes an external legal investigation and an FBI investigation. The players’ main priority, as expressed by Mahomes, was to learn from the mistakes that led them to this situation. Howell, who had won the position promising greater transparency, came to the post after the union’s most secretive election. His management was characterized by a lack of communication with the players, even in his last hours as executive director, according to sources with direct knowledge. During a call on Thursday night, Howell announced his resignation from the executive committee, days after reports revealed that he was working as a consultant for a private equity firm interested in investing in NFL franchises and that he had signed a confidentiality agreement with the NFL to conceal details of a January collusion arbitration decision. The executive committee members were stunned by Howell’s resignation and their reaction was almost unanimous. “The executive committee said, ‘No, you’re not going to do that’,” recounted a player with knowledge of the call. The executive committee, which had backed Howell since he was named a finalist in 2023, had supported him despite revelations about his conduct and side jobs. Less than 24 hours before Howell’s resignation, a member of the executive committee had stated: “We felt very good about the process. We support Lloyd 100 percent.” The committee members repeatedly pressured Howell to stay on as leader, according to three sources with firsthand knowledge. “They tried to convince him for three hours,” said one of the sources. “Howell repeatedly said no.” During the call, Howell mentioned having visited strip clubs while at work, but did not offer details, stating that he had paid for a transportation service to a club with his own money, according to several sources. However, Howell did not change his decision to resign. At 10:38 p.m., he issued a public statement announcing that he had become “a distraction” to the union’s work and that he was resigning. The next day, executive committee members were astonished to read the details of the strip clubs, according to reports. The report cited internal union documents showing that Howell had charged the union $738.82 for transportation to a Miami strip club and $2,426 for a visit to an Atlanta club with two employees during a union retreat in February. Some members of the executive committee concluded that Howell had not told them the whole truth. “The guys were very disappointed,” said one of the sources. “They supported Howell in everything… If he failed, their process failed, and they didn’t want to face that.” A senior union executive stated that “Howell’s mistakes were human errors and errors of judgment.” “Lloyd is a good man. He’s not a villain,” the executive said. “He’s guilty of the things he’s guilty of. From the beginning, he was never accepted in the office nor did he make a real effort to build some important relationships that could have been useful.” The image shows NFLPA Executive Director Lloyd Howell, who promised greater transparency upon taking the position. Now, union leaders, who must deal with the crisis, are focusing on the 16-month process that led them to choose Howell as a replacement for DeMaurice Smith, who led the union from 2009 to 2023. The union paid approximately $500,000 to the search firm Russell Reynolds Associates to work with the executive committee in evaluating dozens of candidates, but the committee wanted to select only two finalists to present to the player representatives. All candidate names would remain secret. Tretter, at that time president of the NFLPA, stated that confidentiality was a priority when selecting the finalists, as the names of the candidates had been leaked to the media in previous elections. “The two previous versions of the search process were grotesque,” said Tretter, who pushed for changes in the statutes to implement electoral confidentiality. “They were far below the level at which our union should be operating.” Several players agreed that, if the union wanted to recruit the best external candidates, it needed to promise and safeguard the secret.However, some of the candidates themselves thought otherwise. Former quarterback Matt Schaub, Hall of Famer Kellen Winslow, and Domonique Foxworth, a former player and ESPN commentator who was president of the NFLPA from 2012 to 2014, were among those interviewed for the position in early 2023. Although Russell Reynolds Associates told the candidates that they wanted a union or business professional and a former athlete among the finalists, no former player made it to the final six. Gene Upshaw, the Raiders legend, was the last former player to lead the NFLPA.
Schaub, a former player representative, expressed his disappointment at not having passed his first 90-minute interview with a Russell Reynolds representative. But even more so, he was frustrated at not being able to present his case directly to the executive committee or player representatives. “When you go into NFL locker rooms and ask players about union leadership, they want to hear from someone who has been in their shoes and played the game,” Schaub said. “The fact that not a single player even made it to the semifinals of a process that wasn’t transparent is a slap in the face to every player representative who might want to hear a final argument from someone who wore a helmet.” Foxworth got two interviews with the executive committee, but Tretter called him in February 2023 to tell him that he would not advance to the next round nor would he have the opportunity to address the player representatives. “I was stunned,” Foxworth said. “I had been dedicating quite a bit of free time to perfecting the details of the plans and options for the players. I was upset and disappointed.” Of the six finalists, at least three were veteran insiders of the union, and one was a former player, according to several union sources. Among them was George Atallah, the former head of external affairs, who left the NFLPA in 2024 after 15 years. The other two, head of player affairs Don Davis, who had an 11-year career as an NFL linebacker, and chief operating officer Teri Patterson Smith, remain in the union today and are among the candidates for interim executive director. The identity of one finalist remains unknown. The last two of the six finalists were David White, former director of SAG-AFTRA, the union of film actors and others in the entertainment industry, and Howell, who told a senior union executive that he was recruited by Russell Reynolds and applied “on a whim.” Howell had resigned six months earlier from a 34-year executive career at the consulting firm Booz Allen, which at the time was facing whistleblower accusations of overbilling the federal government for hundreds of millions of dollars. The complaint was one of the red flags found by Russell Reynolds in the background check of Howell, according to multiple union sources. Two members of the executive committee stated that the search firm informed them about the case and also that Howell had been sued for sexual discrimination and retaliation by a Booz Allen subordinate in 2011, a complaint resolved for an undisclosed sum in 2015. The committee overwhelmingly favored White, and two members said that no major issues arose in White’s background. But in hours of interviews, Howell persuaded committee members to consider him. Regarding his departure from Booz Allen, one recalled that Howell said he “wanted a new challenge”. “To be clear, nobody told us, hey, [Howell] is good, you can let it go now,” said a veteran player on the executive committee. “We, as a group, made that decision, and we did our due diligence.” The image shows former field marshal Matt Schaub, who was frustrated by not being able to present his case to the executive committee or player representatives. On June 27, 2023, player representatives met at the Salamander Resort in Middleburg, Virginia, and learned the identities of the two finalists: Howell and White. It did not go unnoticed by some union officials the irony that Tretter’s secret electoral process aimed to protect the anonymity of the candidates in their current corporate positions, but neither White nor Howell were employed at that time.For two days, player representatives questioned the two candidates in plenary session and in smaller groups. White emphasized his long career leading a union of 160,000 people. Howell, for his part, argued that his lack of union experience was an advantage. A player representative said he told them: “I’ve been the one fighting against the unions for the corporation. Therefore, I know exactly how they think and how they do things.”
Players who backed Howell said they were convinced his financial acumen was what they needed.During the election session with the player representatives, Howell answered specific questions about his tenure at Booz Allen. Tretter, who in the interviews referred to his notes from the meetings, said he asked Howell: “Early in your career… you were involved in a [sexual] discrimination lawsuit. Can you tell us more about that situation and the outcome?” Tretter said he doesn’t remember how Howell responded.
Two members of the executive committee backed Tretter’s account that Howell was asked about the lawsuit during the session, but two player representatives said the issue never came up before they voted. The player representatives interviewed stated that they were much more impressed with Howell’s presentation and answers and could see him facing the NFL owners at a negotiating table, with billions at stake. “We are not looking for a ‘mom and dad’ type to run our union,” said an executive committee member. “We are looking for a first-class type. The owners and people on the league side are on prestigious boards. We don’t want a guy who isn’t in those kinds of boardrooms.” Tretter said players chose Howell by a wide margin on June 28. In the image, Howell is seen, during his tenure as executive director of the NFLPA, appearing to consider the desire of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to expand the regular season to 18 games. Just three weeks later, Howell’s former employer, Booz Allen, reached a settlement with the U.S. government over the whistleblower’s complaint. Prosecutors announced that the $377 million settlement was one of the largest ever made for that type of fraud case. In August 2023, The Washington Post profiled the Booz Allen whistleblower, who was quoted as saying that he had raised the firm’s alleged overbilling with Howell, who dismissed his concerns. A lead union lawyer read these reports and asked Tom DePaso, the union’s general counsel, to brief the 32 player representatives on Howell’s alleged ties to the Booz Allen overbilling case, according to sources with firsthand knowledge. DePaso said the players were aware of the Booz Allen matter when they considered the choice of Howell, so there was no need to bring it up again, a union source said, but union lawyers were angry because the players were not told about Howell’s lack of action on the whistleblower’s complaints. “It was a bad precedent,” said a former union employee with firsthand knowledge of the matter. In addition, a former union employee said that, shortly after Howell’s election, female employees were surprised to learn that their new CEO had been sued for sexual discrimination and retaliation by a former employee in 2011 while at Booz Allen. “We just couldn’t believe it,” said the former employee. “If you run for a union, you must be impeccable.” A player said members liked Howell because he made them think of the union as “a cooperative business” with the NFL instead of “a thorn in the side” of ownership. “How can we get more money for everyone? Instead of, oh, we want to practice less and smoke more weed, let’s get into [the percentage points of income]'”, the player said. “That’s where [Howell] earned a lot of respect from the players.” A year after taking office, Howell, who was paid $3.6 million in 2024, was talking to some like the cooperative business partner he had told the players he wanted to be with the league. In 2024, Howell said that the union and the league had discussions “at a very high level” about Commissioner Roger Goodell’s public desire for the NFL to expand to an 18-game regular season. “It sounds appealing,” Howell told The Athletic in July 2024. “Who doesn’t want to see more football, including me?” In the following months, two NFL owners independently told that they believed 18 games were almost a certainty. But at this year’s NFLPA Super Bowl press conference in New Orleans, Howell changed course. “Right now, when I’ve talked to the players over the last two seasons, nobody wants to play an 18th game,” he said. “Nobody. Seventeen games, for a lot of the guys, is too long.” During the same press conference, Howell mentioned in passing that he was working part-time at The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm. Last August, the NFL named a handful of firms, including Carlyle, to a list of approved funds that can invest in minority stakes of franchises not exceeding 10%. “I’m an operating executive,” Howell said of his role. “I understand enough to be dangerous when it comes to private equity. It’s intriguing that the current professional football player has more of a capital mindset. They want to put their money to work.” At that moment, the comments did not generate any news. However, current union employees took issue with other comments Howell made that day, including that the recent staff turnover was because he and other leaders were looking for “a level of sophistication they felt they weren’t getting.” The recent purchases he had offered, Howell said, were “to make room for these highly demanded capabilities that we currently don’t have”. As a former union employee said, “That angered a lot of people.” According to multiple employees, Howell also generated anger through some of his behavior at the union headquarters in Washington, D.C. Multiple union employees spoke openly about how little they had seen Howell in the office, sometimes only two or three days a month, and that he often did not respond to calls and text messages as urgent matters loomed. Howell ordered the union’s facilities department to merge two parking spaces to avoid dents on his Porsche Cayenne Turbo, sources said. He asked workers to change the number of the two spaces, 10 and 11, to 32, as a tribute to the jersey number worn by O.J. Simpson, according to Craig Jones, the union’s longtime security director. A second source familiar with the matter confirmed the Simpson inspiration. “I don’t know why O.J.,” said Jones. “Everyone has their preferences, maybe.” On January 14, an arbitrator ruled on the union’s collusion complaint, filed 2 years ago, when three quarterbacks failed to obtain fully guaranteed contracts with their teams after Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson received a record $230 million contract. The NFLPA, still led by Smith, alleged in the October 2022 complaint that team owners were colluding to restrict guaranteed contracts. Referee Christopher Droney ruled that there was insufficient evidence of collusion by the owners, and did not award damages. But he did find that the union had shown that the league’s management council, “with the blessing of commissioner Roger Goodell”, encouraged owners to reduce the guaranteed money in veteran contracts. Once again, Howell and the union’s lawyers chose confidentiality over transparency. He reported last month that the union had reached a confidentiality agreement with the league to hide the details of the ruling from the executive committee and player representatives. The ruling itself was only shared with a select group of union and league executives. Howell told the top player leaders only that the union had lost the grievance case and blamed Smith, his predecessor, for wasting union time and money on a lost cause, according to sources with knowledge of the call. Even Tretter, the union’s strategy director, said he did not receive a copy of the complaint decision. He also insisted that he was unaware of the confidentiality agreement until a meeting this summer. On June 24, the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out” published the 61-page arbitration decision. Following the publication and ESPN’s report on the confidentiality agreement, Howell and the union said they would appeal the decision. A cascade of revelations followed about Howell, including his work at Carlyle and his spending at strip clubs. It also reported in May that the FBI is investigating financial transactions involving OneTeam Partners, a $2 billion group licensing firm co-founded by the NFLPA and the Major League Baseball Players Association in 2019. Howell and MLBPA director Tony Clark held positions on the OneTeam board. Sources in the union told that, while Howell was trying to find a way to stay in the union, he submitted his resignation to The Carlyle Group. But he changed his mind and withdrew his resignation from Carlyle after discovering that it was preparing a story about his expenses at strip clubs, sources said. At that moment, a close friend of Howell told him that he decided to quit the union and “spend more time with his family”. “It’s worth nine figures,” said the friend. “I just wanted to move on.” In the wake of his departure from the union, Howell also resigned from his part-time position with The Carlyle Group and his seat on the board of directors of the rating firm Moody’s Corp., which said in a government filing that his departure “was not the result of any disagreement with the company’s operations, policies or practices”. The union’s leadership void is now being navigated by a handful of veteran union lawyers and the 32 player representatives, who must select an interim director, perhaps as early as this week. Multiple people who work in the union and former executives said it could take months or more to repair a broken NFLPA. “The NFLPA takes seriously the concerns raised in recent reports and is committed to the values on which it was founded, including transparency and progress,” a union spokesperson said in a statement. “Our union stands firm on those pillars in the future as we do the necessary work in the best interest of our player members.” In a separate statement, NFLPA President Jalen Reeves-Maybin said: “While our union has been tested lately, we remain committed to the values of integrity, responsibility, and progress to serve the best interests of our members. … I am in close contact with the NFLPA Executive Leadership Team to ensure good governance practices and the continuation of union affairs until an interim executive director is elected.” White, who lost the finalist vote to Howell in 2023, said he is encouraging the union. “What I want is for these men to be protected in one of the most exploitative industries on Earth, and my hope is that whoever they choose has the experience and strategic wisdom to achieve this,” said White, who is now the CEO of the executive coaching firm 3CG Ventures. Cyrus Mehri, a civil rights lawyer who failed to remove Smith as NFLPA executive director in 2017, said he feels bad for the players who were let down by both Howell and the lack of transparency that has “become part of the union’s culture: denying players’ choices, denying them information.” “Guess what happens when they shut down the process? They don’t get a diversity of ideas… And then they end up with a guy like Lloyd Howell, who has never spent a day in his life helping workers.” Foxworth said he is more optimistic than ever that the leadership crisis will lead the players to do well this time. “This was obviously embarrassing, but it got everyone’s attention, and the players are more involved,” Foxworth said. “This isn’t a business. It’s a union. The strength of the union doesn’t come from some fast-talking lawyers or CFOs. It comes from a committed and activated body.”
