The NFL Players Association's annual report cards are working. The best evidence? The NFL hates them.
The league hates them enough that it has, according to Seth Wickersham and Don Van Natta Jr. of ESPN.com, filed a grievance regarding the practice.
The NFL contends that the effort violates the Collective Bargaining Agreement. In an August 2025 letter from the league's Management Council to NFLPA general counsel Tom DePaso, the NFL argued that 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."
The union informed players about the grievance last week, adding that it plans to proceed with this year's survey.
"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 said in an email to its members.
Some owners have taken the scrutiny to heart by making changes. Others, like Jets owner Woody Johnson (who had no qualms last month about publicly criticizing his quarterback) have opted to attack the process. Which, obviously, is what dysfunctional teams will do when faced with real feedback regarding the overall operations of a dysfunctional business.
It's been one of the best innovations from the NFLPA in years, because the people who own NFL teams typically avoid any and all criticism or accountability. Fans aren't inclined to boycott their favorite teams; even when they hate the product their love of the team keeps them from emotionally detaching. Thus, even when a team consistently loses, it continuously wins the battle of the balance sheet.
As one ownership told ESPN.com, "[T]he only owners who don't care for [the report cards] are the ones who get the subpar grades."
It's a symptom of the modern age. If you don't like something, attack it. If there's a way to kill it through available legal channels, even better.
Here's hoping the NFLPA stands firm, and prevails. And if the NFL doesn't like it, they can make an appropriate concession (high-quality grass fields in every stadium, for example) to get rid of it in the next CBA.