Every year, the NFL’s players association conducts “report cards” for the 32 NFL franchises, which provide insight into how players assess their team’s performance in various categories, from training rooms to the treatment of their families.<\/p>\n
However, the NFL recently filed a grievance against the NFLPA, according to ESPN,<\/a> that asked the union to stop conducting those report cards. The grievance said “the exercise violates the collective bargaining agreement by airing public criticism of teams,” per ESPN.<\/a><\/p>\n The NFLPA reportedly has plans to move forward with its next survey anyway, despite gripes from owners \u2014 including New York Jets<\/a> owner Woody Johnson, who called the report card surveys\u00a0“totally bogus” at a league meeting in March, according to ESPN<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here’s what’s known about the disagreement between the NFL and NFLPA over the annual “report cards.”<\/p>\n MORE WEEK 11 NFL:<\/p>\n Why NFL owners want to stop NFLPA report cards<\/p>\n According to ESPN,<\/a> a letter from the NFL’s management council to NFLPA general counsel Tom DePaso from August 2025 included claims from the league that the NFLPA’s annual report cards violate a CBA clause that\u00a0says both 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.”\u00a0<\/p>\n In the letter, the NFL asked the NFLPA to discontinue the report cards, claiming they air “public criticism of teams,” per ESPN.<\/a><\/p>\n Additionally in the letter, the league argued that the NFL and NFLPA had previously agreed to conduct a joint survey about player care “and other relevant topics” every three years. The NFLPA report cards, the NFL argued, “adversely affected the reliability of the CBA-mandated survey.” The joint survey the NFL was referring to was last conducted in 2015, with league and union representatives confidentially meeting with teams about areas of improvement.<\/p>\n However, after the NFLPA had “months of discussions” with the league about the report cards, it recently informed players of the NFL’s grievance and said it still plans to move forward with this year’s report card survey.<\/p>\n “We have responded to the grievance with our intention to fight against this action and continue what’s clearly become an effective tool for comparing workplace standards across the league and equipping you to make informed career decisions,” the NFLPA wrote in an email to players, according to ESPN.<\/a><\/p>\n This also reportedly isn’t the first time the NFL has asked the NFLPA to halt its report cards. In 2024 and in June 2025, the NFLPA declined requests to end the report cards, per ESPN.<\/a> The NFL is now ”\u00a0trying to have the issue heard by an arbitrator,” with hopes of a resolution by February 2026.<\/p>\n The topic of the NFLPA’s report cards also reportedly came up at an owner’s meeting, with ownership sources telling ESPN that because the report cards only provide “general grades” and not specific feedback, “they serve as an instrument to mock teams without telling them which areas need improvement.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n At an NFL league meeting in March 2025, Jets owner Woody Johnson called the report cards “totally bogus” and hinted that they violated the CBA, according to ESPN<\/a>. Johnson reportedly did not like “how they collected the information [and] who they collected it from.”<\/p>\n “[It] was supposed to be according to the agreement we have with the league. It’s supposed to be a process [where] we have representatives and they have representatives, so we know that it’s an honest survey,” Johnson said, per ESPN<\/a>.\u00a0“And that was violated, in my opinion. I’m going to leave it at that, but I think there are a lot of owners that looked at that survey and said this is not fair, it’s not balanced, it’s not every player, it’s not even representative of the players.”<\/p>\n MORE: Updated NFL playoff picture through Week 10<\/a><\/p>\n What are NFLPA report cards?<\/p>\n Every year, the NFLPA releases “report cards” that grade teams, from A to F, on various categories in terms of how they treat their players.\u00a0<\/p>\n The NFLPA’s report cards site says the goal of the report cards is to “improve the overall working conditions for our players, which includes the daily experience of players at the team facilities away from the lights and cameras,” and also to “help raise standards across the league.”<\/p>\n In 2025, the categories that were graded included: Treatment of families, food\/dining area, nutritionist\/dietician, locker room, training room, training staff, weight room, strength coaches, team travel, head coach and ownership.<\/p>\n According to ESPN,<\/a> in the NFLPA’s email to players about the NFL’s grievance over the report cards, it told players\u00a0that teams had been improving working conditions based on data from the annual survey, including\u00a0nine teams improving their “family services” score over time.<\/p>\n NFLPA report cards 2024<\/p>\n In total, 1,695 players responded to the NFLPA’s report card survey for the 2024 season, which was released in February 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the survey,\u00a0the NFL\u2019s 32 teams improved grades by an average of 3.5 points, according to The Athletic,<\/a> with\u00a0a 41% increase in “As” received from players. The Los Angeles Chargers<\/a>, Washington Commanders<\/a> and Atlanta Falcons<\/a> all saw significant improvements in grades from the prior year’s survey.<\/p>\n The Miami Dolphins<\/a> (first) and Minnesota Vikings<\/a> (second) earned the highest average grades overall. The three teams who received an A+ in ownership were the Dolphins (Stephen Ross), the Vikings (Zygi Wilf) and Falcons (Arthur Blank), while the Jets (Woody Johnson) received an F for ownership.<\/p>\n For head coaches, six teams received an A+ (Commanders, Falcons, Vikings, Chiefs<\/a>, Lions<\/a>, Dolphins), while no teams received below a C grade.<\/p>\n Here were the other “F” or “F-” grades assessed in the 2024 survey:<\/p>\n Team Travel:\u00a0Eagles (F), Patriots (F),\u00a0Bills (F-)Weight Room: Cardinals (F), Patriots (F)Locker Room: Commanders (F), Broncos (F), Browns (F-),\u00a0Cardinals (F-)Food\/Dining Area: Bengals (F)Treatment of Families:\u00a0Jaguars (F), Bengals (F-)<\/p>\n