NFLPA elects Howell as new executive director

The NFL Players Association’s board of player representatives has elected Lloyd Howell as the NFLPA’s new executive director.

Howell will take over for DeMaurice Smith, with an official start date “in the coming weeks,” according to a release from the NFLPA. Smith was reelected to his fifth term for the position in 2021, and he said at the time it would be his final term. Howell becomes the NFLPA’s fourth executive director, following Ed Garvey (1971-1983), Gene Upshaw (1983-2008) and Smith (2009-present).

“We are excited to have Lloyd lead our union into its next chapter and succeed DeMaurice Smith, who has ably led our organization for the past decade plus and has our gratitude and thanks,” NFLPA president JC Tretter said in a statement. “It was important for us to run a process that lived up to the prestige of the position we sought to fill. The process was 100% player led and focused on leadership competency, skills and experience. Our union deserves strong leadership and a smooth transition, and we are confident Lloyd will make impactful advances on behalf of our membership.”

The search, which began over a year ago, was conducted by an 11-member NFLPA search committee made up of the union’s executive officers, including Tretter and vice presidents Calais Campbell, Austin Ekeler and Richard Sherman.

“Leadership matters and player leadership matters, and I think this is something we want to build on and we see as a giant step forward and a template for the future of what our union can do and how important it’s to have really strong player leadership,” said Tretter, who retired from the NFL in August while remaining on as NFLPA president.

The process, which began in March 2022, was largely confidential after Tretter and the executive officers recommended a new amendment to the union’s search bylaws in July that called for names of candidates to be withheld from the board until the group met to vote on the executive director position. The board passed the amendment unanimously, allowing Tretter and the executive committee to vet potential candidates in secret over the course of several months before selecting the finalists to be voted on by the board.

Tretter — who couldn’t remember when the committee first met with Howell, citing a large volume of interviews — declined to disclose the final number of candidates. He said the committee presented between two and four to the board to vote on, as constitutionally mandated.

The player representatives learned the identity of the candidates this week, Tretter confirmed, and the vote was held Wednesday morning with 30 of 32 teams represented. To be elected, a candidate had to have the majority of the votes, which were cast by secret ballot and tallied by a third-party accounting firm.

While Tretter estimated 48 of a possible 128 player representatives and alternates attended the vote, only 47 were pictured in a photo Tretter posted with Howell after the election.

“We were not going to hold a vote until the board unanimously was ready to vote, and we waited until that time today — this morning — the board told us ‘We are ready to vote unanimously,'” Tretter said. “We held a vote. They said we’re ready. And we went to a vote.”

In a briefing with NFL media Wednesday, Tretter defended the search and election process and downplayed concerns about prioritizing confidentiality over transparency, calling it “good governance.”

“We talked about wanting to cast a wide net, and the way you get very talented people to get involved in a process if they believe in the process, how it’s going to be run,” Tretter said. “… We did a lot of research back into what [past elections in] 2009 and 2015 looked like. I believe in 2009 we had newspapers endorsing candidates. … And this isn’t for the media to decide, this is for player leadership to decide as our constitution lays out. So, the way the board kind of looked at good governance was the [executive committee’s] job is to then qualify the candidates, bring them to us, and then let us make the decision for what’s best for the players. So again, we did that.”

Players such as Pittsburgh Steelers player representative Cam Heyward praised the process’ discretion.

“Our @NFLPA EC and President @JCTretter did an amazing job to keep it confidential, professional, find someone who will steer our great union forward!” Heyward tweeted.

Very honored to watch and be a part of a vote from our elected board to elect our new Executive Director Lloyd Howell. Our @NFLPA EC and President @JCTretter did an amazing job to keep it confidential, professional, find someone who will steer our great union forward! https://t.co/eoiNpPqmjE

— Cam Heyward (@CamHeyward) June 28, 2023

Howell retired in December from Booz Allen Hamilton, where he worked for more than 34 years and was the chief financial officer at the time of his retirement. He also is a trustee at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a bachelor’s degree from Penn in electrical engineering and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

“It’s going to be my sole mission to advocate and push and lead and drive what is in the interest of the players,” Howell said Wednesday. “It’s been sort of hours since the decision has been made, but I intend to really connect with the players, understand their priorities, and establish an agenda that I will lead and drive with the team.”