The NFL tried to kill the NFL Players Association’s annual report cards. Ultimately, the league merely wounded them. And, in turn, pissed them off.
The annual report cards will continue; the recent arbitration ruling made it clear that they are permitted under Article 39 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Per a source with knowledge of the situation, the next set of NFLPA report cards is coming “soon.”
In past years, the NFLPA released the report cards and held a press conference regarding them during the week of the Scouting Combine. The union is currently tracking a similar timeline.
Because the goal of the report cards is to help players make informed decisions in free agency, they need to be released before the opening of the annual negotiating window, on March 9.
Are they a factor in free agency? Why wouldn’t they be? If a player has equivalent offers from a team that gets As and a team that gets Fs, that becomes a major factor in the final analysis.
For the teams, that can make it harder to sign free agents. An F-heavy team may have to offer more than other teams have offered to lure a player.
The goal for every team is to attract free agents without overpaying. The best teams manage to do it by underpaying, relative to other offers.
Obviously, many factors go into the decisions that players will be making. Playing time, systems, familiarity with coaches, location, and state income taxes are some of the relevant considerations.
Still, it’s better to do better in the report cards than do worse. Soon, the players will know where all of the teams currently land.
And while the NFLPA is no longer permitted to publish the results, they may be communicated to all players. And while arbitrator conclude that the NFLPA “must, of course, make clear to its members and anyone else who will have internal access to the 2026 Report Cards that those Cards, and the criticisms contained in them, are not [to] be made public,” it will be impossible to prevent some 2,000 NFLPA members from finding a way to leak the report cards to members of the media.
The fact that the NFL has made its disdain for the publication of the report cards so clear will only make some of them more determined to do so.
