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Score a victory for the Jets and Woody Johnson.
Because of alleged suspect information-gathering and grading methodologies, Johnson led the charge by NFL owners to debunk the Players Association’s 11-category “Team Report Cards” that were publicized the last three offseasons.
An independent arbitrator agreed in ruling that the Report Cards violate the collective bargaining agreement and also issuing an order preventing the disclosure of any future Report Cards, according to a memo sent Friday by the league to all 32 teams.
Johnson received the only “F” grade among team owners last season and the Jets ranked No. 29 out of 32 across the board, though that assessment can be framed differently after the NFLPA’s counsel admitted, per the memo, during the grievance proceedings that the union:
• “cherry-picked which topics and responses to include (or not) in the Report Cards.”
• had its staffers write the summaries and that “players had no role in drafting the commentary included in the Report Cards.” For example, the Jets’ 2025 report card read that “rather than addressing concerns, players believed that management responded to (2024) feedback by making conditions worse.”
• “selected which anonymous individual player quotations to include (or exclude entirely) to support its chosen narrative.”
• “determined the weight of each topic and the resulting impact on the alphabetical grades it assigned.”
“We are pleased with the decision from the arbitrator, upholding the parties’ collective bargaining agreement and prohibiting the NFLPA from disparaging our clubs and individuals through ‘report cards’ allegedly based on data and methodologies that it has steadfastly refused to disclose,” an NFL spokesperson said.
The Jets’ lowest grade (D+, ranking No. 26 among the teams) outside of Johnson’s was for the locker room, which was entirely revamped before last season and received high praise from players. Johnson already had commissioned the locker-room renovation before the Report Cards were released.
“In essence,” the memo read, “the record established that the Report Cards were designed by the union to advance its interests under the guise of a scientific exercise.”
The NFLPA said that roughly 77 percent of its membership took part in the survey from Aug. 26, 2024, through Nov. 20, 2024.
Johnson called the results “totally bogus” last March. How so?
“How they collected the information, who they collected it from — it’s supposed to be a process where we have representatives and they have representatives so we know it’s an honest survey,” Johnson said. “And that was violated, in my opinion.
“There a lot of owners that looked at this survey and said this is not fair, not balanced, it’s not every player, it’s not even representative of the players.”
The arbitrator agreed.
One survey component that will remain, however, is the players’ opinions regarding the adequacy of medical care provided, per the memo. The NFL’s Management Council and the NFLPA will continue to design and conduct such a survey in the future.
“The program is not going away,” the NFLPA said in a statement. “The ruling upholds our right to survey players and share the results with players and clubs. While we strongly disagree with the restriction on making those results public, that limitation does not stop the program or its impact.”
The union claimed that the ruling determined their “methodology is sound.”
“Importantly, the arbitrator rejected the NFL’s characterization of the process,” the statement read, “finding the Team Report Cards to be fair, balanced and increasingly positive over time.”
