NFL owners killing player report cards won’t fix bad ownership, it just exposes it

The NFL has an accountability problem. Year after year, players give feedback about certain franchises and the way things are done just like any other employee at a poorly run workplace would. It allows us fans to get a truer sense of how the business side of things really works at our favorite clubs.

Those insights come in the form of the NFL Player Association team report cards. Last year, the Miami Dolphins and Minnesota Vikings were the best teams to play for, at least according to the players. The Arizona Cardinals, New England Patriots and Cleveland Browns rounded out the bottom three. But now owners, not liking how much deserved flack they're getting, are looking to end those reports.

The NFL filed a grievance against the NFLPA, according to a report from ESPN on Thursday, asking the union to end its player report card practice because it violates a clause in the collective bargaining agreement. That clause reportedly states that NFL owners and the union must "use reasonable efforts to curtail public comments by club personnel or players which express criticism of any club, its coach, or its operation and policy."

To which the only response should be: Come on.

NFL owners are telling on themselves when it comes to being exposed over poor working conditions

That clause seems rather straightforward, and a very odd one to have been agreed to by the union. It effectively silences players from speaking their minds on working conditions, which arguably isn't very well-enforced anyways given how often they speak in the locker room on those topics.

Regardless, to see NFL owners like the New York Jets' Woody Johnson (whose team finished 29th in the 2024-25 report card standings) call the anonymous practice "totally bogus" just tells fans and players everything they need to know about how much care there actually is for workplace quality around the league.

Also, notice that it's an owner who has consistently earned poor marks that is complaining. One anonymous owner even told ESPN as much.

"The only owners who don't care for [the report cards] are the ones who get the subpar grades," they said at the league owners meeting in March.

Johnson claimed the CBA violation came from the union collecting non-representative data without league participants present when collection occurred, calling it "not fair" and "not balanced."

Well, if you think about it, who is going to speak their mind in an HR meeting if your boss' assistant is sitting in on the supposedly anonymous session? Clearly, players don't believe complaints will be taken seriously if the pencil pushers from the front office are the ones listening.

This could be a PR nightmare for the league if it takes further action on its grievance, too. Fans and reporters will start asking why a league that claims to care so much about its players is going to such lengths to silence the only public method they have to voice concerns. Also, why does the CBA include a clause that doesn't allow them to publicly voice those concerns?

This story is far from over, but the union told ESPN it plans to go forward with its annual report cards for the 2025-26 season. Don't be surprised if Johnson drops a couple more spots in this edition.