For the first time, the NFL Players Association conducted a “player team report card” for all 32 teams. It presented the results of the player survey of eight topics — treatment of player families, food service/nutrition, weight room, strength coaches, training room, training staff, locker room and team travel — on Wednesday.
The players’ union ranked all 32 teams in an attempt to give free agents information to consider before deciding where to sign.
The Vikings ranked as the top team overall, followed by the Dolphins and the Raiders. The Commanders were at the bottom of the rankings, with the Cardinals 31st and the Chargers 30th.
The survey was sent to roughly 2,200 players, and the NFLPA received 1,300 responses.
NFLPA president JC Tretter calls it basic “football decency.”
“One of the things we wanted to be able to present to players was, what are the decisions your team is making when given the option to do something for you,” Tretter said Wednesday.
Three teams close their cafeteria for dinner, and the Bengals also close it on off days. The Bengals also don’t provide nutritional supplements to players.
Six teams don’t put players in first class, and seven make players have a roommate on the road.
Eighteen teams offer a family room for players’ families in the stadium on game day.
“It’s a choice,” Tretter said.
Tretter also said most teams are doing right by their players.
“I don’t want this to be a mudslinging,” he said.
The NFLPA plans to conduct the survey annually in hopes of getting teams that don’t provide what other teams are providing to get up to speed.
“Next year there can be no claim of ignorance, because we brought the problem up,” Tretter said. “It will be even more telling if these issues continue next year because then that is a clear choice. There’s no claim of ignorance there. So, teams will have no choice but to act upon some of these issues that really are team choices in how you want to treat the players and how you don’t. I’m not expecting teams to knock down facilities and rebuild them in the next three months, but some of the clear choices . . . can be fixed very, very quickly. We’ll be able to figure out whether it is being cheap or whether it is ignorance. That will be solved year 2 for sure.”
The entire list can be found at NFLPA.com.
The league released a statement from Jeff Miller, NFL executive vice president of president of communications, public affairs and policy.
“We welcome the player feedback and look forward to reviewing the data from the NFLPA’s poll,” Miller said. “On Monday, during joint NFL and NFLPA meetings in Indianapolis, we discussed the process by which we would conduct the next comprehensive player survey to continue to work together to improve players’ experiences at NFL clubs. The NFL and NFLPA have a history of jointly commissioning an expert third party to conduct a scientifically rigorous survey of all NFL players on a variety of topics important to the player experience, as outlined in our Collective Bargaining Agreement. The National Opinion Research Center, which is affiliated with the University of Chicago, designed the last survey to provide the most comprehensive and accurate information possible.”