NFL Network Parts With Reporter Who Questioned Roger Goodell About Diversity

Trotter worked with NFL Media for nearly five years.

Longtime NFL writer Jim Trotter is leaving NFL.com and NFL Network after nearly five years, he announced Monday.

Trotter explained that his contract will not be renewed. This week will be Trotter’s last with NFL Media.

“Some personal news: This will be my final week with the NFL Media Group,” Trotter tweeted. “I was informed over the weekend that my contract is not being renewed. I thank NFL Network and NFL.com for the lessons learned and affirmed over the last five years.”

Prior to Trotter’s tenure at NFL Media, he worked at ESPN, Sports Illustrated and The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Although NFL Media hasn’t released any information as to why Trotter’s contract wasn’t renewed, some observers wonder if it has anything to do with the reporter’s coverage of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

Trotter asked Goodell about the league’s lack of diversity among coaches and executives ahead of Super Bowl LVII last month. When later asked why he decided to bring up the issue on such a public stage, Trotter said that he’d asked Goodell the same question a year prior hadn’t seen any progress. 

“They don’t let you get close to the Commissioner often enough to actually have these dialogues,” Trotter told The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch. “So, I knew that I had asked him about it the year before, and I knew that there had been no progress. No real progress as it related to the areas that I asked him about a year earlier. And so I felt that it was important to ask him in that situation because it’s not something that I haven’t brought up internally over the course of the last year with the powers that be at the media group.”