The NFL Shoots the Messenger
- Fred
- Mar 1
- 3 min read
An arbitrator found that the report cards violated the collective bargaining agreement by "disparaging NFL clubs and individuals." - ESPN
Last month, the NFL banned the NFLPA from publishing NFL Report Cards. Why? More than any other league in the United States, the NFL is all about parity.
When the NFL pie is split, more or less, 32 equal ways, teams are looking for every advantage to sign free agents when the money is equal.
We are going to focus on only 2 categories for our example from the 2025 Report Card. The first is the Treatment of Families. If you're a 21 year old bachelor, you probably don't care one bit about how your family is treated. But if you're a 25 year old free agent with 3 small children, that could be the difference between two teams offering equal money.
Now the Bengals are a notoriously "cheap" franchise, not spending beyond what is required in a contract. For the last 6 years, the Bengals have had the least valuable NFL franchise, they hate being called cheap, they prefer the term frugal.
The second category is Team Ownership. You'll notice a lot of A's on teams with good owners, in all categories.
Whereas teams with "bad" owners tend to have lower grades in all categories.
Now there are different ways free agents can differentiate between cities with matching free agent offers beyond the scores, like state taxes or climate, but the NFL Report Card really struck a nerve with bad owners.
Owners don't seem to mind that their teams suck behind the curtain, they just don't want the fans to know it.
As a Cleveland Browns fan, this quote at Dawg Pound Daily really summed up the situation:
"The Browns are notorious for consistently ranking near the bottom of these reports, with only three of the 11 categories being ranked above a "C" grade in 2025. But the public transparency of poor ownership, subpar facilities, and player treatment will now become a private matter, potentially without meaningful accountability, highlighting the stark contrast between owner and fan interest. While the league and ownership have argued this change revolves around policy and process, it's evident that this is a strategic move to avoid scrutiny, which greatly benefits the Haslams. Past evaluations have been brutally honest and overwhelmingly critical, but it is this exact pushback that places the foundational building blocks of change and improvement."
Yikes.
I was just about hit the publish button on Friday, but something surprising happened. A member of the NFLPA leaked 2026's results to the press.
Again, we aren't going to focus on all 32 teams, but just the Browns:
I can't stop laughing, the Browns got one "A" in 2026. That A belonged to Defensive Coordinator Jim Schwartz. When the Browns fired their coach Kevin Stefanski, at least 3 candidates dropped out of the coaching search during the search process. The final two candidates that remained were Schwartz and Raven O-Coordinator Todd Monken.
The Browns leaked that they were very interested in keeping Schwartz as D-Coordinator and hired Monken as their head coach. The problem with that plan is that the GM didn't have that conversation with Schwartz, and the day after Monken started, Schwartz quit in an angry, and very public, fashion.
So the one thing the Browns scored well on, D-Coordinator, that guy quit in a fit of rage last month. The Browns ranked 30th of 32 teams on the report card.
Are the Browns embarrassed? They're too stupid to be embarrassed--
How in the world did ESPN get the 2026 results?
According to ProFootballTalk:
"NFL declined comment to PFT regarding the leak of the report cards.
It remains to be seen where things go from here. The NFL’s position is that the report cards are not reliable or scientifically valid, and in turn should be ignored by the teams. The union disagrees with that characterization, obviously. If the situation results in another grievance, it’s important to remember what the existing ruling does and doesn’t say. The arbitrator found that Article 39 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement does not prevent the creation of the report cards. The arbitrator found that Article 51 prohibits the NFLPA from publishing the results. The arbitrator made no findings regarding whether the report cards are unreliable or not scientifically valid."
So the NFLPA can collect the data, compile the data, and circulate the data to members, but it cannot release the data to the press? But then a player leaked the entire report to ESPN?
I guarantee you that the NFL is going to sue SOMEBODY!
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