The Titans are the real losers in latest cowardly decision by NFL owners to kill one of the NFLPA’s most powerful tools

Players aren’t the only ones being hurt by the shameful actions of certain owners to kill the NFLPA report cards.

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
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The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) just suffered a disappointing blow at the hands of an arbitrator. It was announced Friday morning that the NFL had prevailed over the NFLPA in their NFLPA Report Card Grievance, and that the ruling determined these team report cards are in violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

One of the most insightful and influential moments of public accountability each year will be no more. The meaningful work these report cards had inspired was significant and well-documented, including a personal anecdote I’d like to share from my time covering the Titans. This shameful decision by certain NFL owners to get these reports killed hurts franchises operating in good faith like Tennessee, in addition to yanking power from the hands of the players themselves.

NFL Owners kill the good being done by NFLPA report cards

Put simply, the NFLPA puts out team report cards on each franchise at the end of February every year. These grades are determined by anonymous player polling, giving the athletes a safe place to share their honest feelings on the working conditions within each team. These report cards would always garner significant fan and media attention, praising the teams making improvements year-over-year and publicly shaming those with glaring deficiencies. It was a powerful tool.

And naturally, the people truly in charge decided they couldn’t take the heat. Some of these owners who don’t bat an eye at intense public scrutiny levied at their players, coaches and executives on a daily basis put their foot down once some accountability landed at their doorstep. It’s a deeply cowardly, pathetic look for those behind this arbitrator ruling no matter how they justify declaring it unfair or illegal.

In one of the least surprising developments of all time, notoriously awful Jets owner Woody Johnson was reported by ESPN to be behind the push to end the report cards last fall.

It’s going to shock you to learn that the latest (and now last public) grade Johnson received from his players in the “Ownership” category was an F. He was the only owner to earn a failing grade in 2025.

He, along with everybody else backing him, looks utterly scared to compete in light of this ruling. Instead of doing everything in their power to improve things for their players, they decided it would be much easier to just kill the mechanism of public accountability.

Here’s what Titans NFLPA representative Jeffery Simmons said about this grievance in November:

“Those report cards, they’re the truth. I’m sure guys aren’t just going on there, because it’s not mandatory that guys fill it out. So they go on there and they fill it out, and whatever we put out there, whatever we grade, that we think on that report card when we’re filling out the survey, that’s the truth… a lot of people don’t like to hear the truth at times, but we’re going to stick together and I’m sure we’ll be ready to fight it as the NFLPA.”

The Titans are one of the franchises who aren’t afraid to compete on these grades. By all accounts, owner Amy Adams Strunk, President/CEO Burke Nihill, and President of Football Operations Chad Brinker are operating in good faith, constantly looking for ways to be a more player-focused organization. In recent years, the team’s HQ was fully rebuild and has been remodeled with upgrades regularly. Player facilities such as the weight room, locker room, saunas, and health science technologies have undergone significant change in recent years. I’m not here to tell you they were focused on these things solely because of the incentive presented by the yearly report cards. But that incentive was naturally on their minds just like the rest of the league.

The report cards gave every franchise who was actually interested in competing to be the best and get the best players one more big reason to put their money where their mouth was.

I think back to my time speaking with Burke Nihill last summer, when I wrote a series of articles on this team’s big future plans. The flagship project of these plans is of course New Nissan Stadium, and while discussing the details of the megastructure, it was immediately evident to me where their attention to detail overlapped with the annual report cards.

At one point Nihill was detailing the massive locker room, family room, and underground parking designs he and his team were working on. He was emphasizing the driving factor behind these designs: becoming the team with the most player-friendly facilities and accommodations in the league. It was clear this was a point of pride. At one point I interjected half jokingly with “oh you all are trying to ace the NFLPA report cards with this, aren’t you!”

Every Titans employee in that room lit up and laughed. As reductive as that sounds, the answer was yes. The players were the focus, and the shine of the annual report card was a part of that equation. Now, the teams doing the work to maximize their attractiveness to players across the league won’t have that forward-facing publicity incentivizing and rewarding them. And that’s a real shame.

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