1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - NFLPA Grades Are OUT! Lets Break Them Down (Part 3) : February 27th, 1:45pm

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

NFLPA Grades Are OUT! Lets Break Them Down (Part 3)Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Back to one-on-one with DP, sponsored by the Downtown Lincoln Foundation on 93-7 The Ticket. This is one-on-one here on 93-7 The Ticket. Myself, Jake Buckman, and Austin Orman, in with you today. And we're going through the NFLPA report cards, pretty much just the highlights and low lights of most of the teams. There's a few of them. We counted right a lot. But trying to get through this within hours is what our goal is going to be. We're going to try to get this done here.

It's just some highlights and low lights here for the remaining teams. We left off with the Patriots. We have an F in team travel, an A and head coach, A and offensive coordinator as well. D, home game field and D plus and food and dining. That gives them 20. They've come in ranked 26th overall, which, of course, they're one of the more,

the best franchise is on the field. Right. Again, it's just funny how the perception within the locker room and out of the locker room doesn't necessarily always match up. And, you know, if, let's say in that situation, it is actually that bad, right? Maybe credit the players for being professional

and playing through it, right? Not causing a big stink about it. And, you know, knowing it's part of the job is that, yeah, this is your chance to voice it. But, you know, in season, you know, complain about it in the locker room that, you know, may not be rated well, as we've seen from this survey.

But when you got a job to do, he got a job to do. Well, not always do. You know, I know these are supposed to not be tied back to you, but I'd always be worried about that team ownership grade. I might make sure I'm not on the wrong side of that. So that's the other part from that, that ESPN article here that I was reading. Oh, yeah.

So the memo that got sent out from the arbitrator stated that NFL players had no role in the commentary included with the report cards, that all the commentary was written by union staffers in the, Union chose which anonymous player quotes to use or exclaimed. Very interesting. I don't know. That's another one of those things that you're granted anonymity. Yeah.

How anonymous is it? But somebody knows. Yeah, you're doing it from the teams, teams internet. And, you know, you use that IP. Is a desktop computer at someone's desk? So you can't trace it back to any particular person. Then the person whose desk you sat at might know. Or, you know, is it like the testing center?

down there on campus, you know, just walk in and, you know, wait, it is actually tied to, you had to scan in with your ID card or whatever. So, someone always knows. And maybe that's a little conspiratorial, but, you know, you have to have a space of the forum to speak your voice. But yeah, I wonder if, you know, some of this has ever gotten back and played a role in free agency discussions. But my guess would be, you know, if it's someone complaining, it's either superstar that

then ends up getting their way and getting the contract anyways or if it's someone at the bottom of the roster, well, we can find someone else that won't complain about this. You were going to get cut anyways, so we don't blame you for this or blame this for you getting cut. But thanks for your service. We'll see you later. But it all certainly can. Like if you grab five of the higher up players on the Patriots and five of the, well, maybe in this example would be the opposite way,

like five of the bottom end players of the Patriots and five of the top end players of the Saints, you might get like different results or feelings about what their experience has been. Oh, for sure. I mean, Jay's talked about that at times too, where, you know, Thurwin Thomas and Bruce Smith could go straight up to, you know, Ralph Wilson. You know, other guys had to go, you know, to their position coach. You would then go to the head coach, who then go to the GM. Okay.

Who then would go to ownership. And, you know, as much as I think we want to believe that it's meritocratic and everyone's on a level playing field, everyone's valued the same way in an organization. We also can't kid ourselves. There are superstar rules. There are superstar privileges and benefits to being among the best at your position. So, you know, maybe the five worst in the best organization and the five best in the, you know, worst organization, whatever it is, have different experiences.

I think that's normal to second. Yeah, yeah, no matter where you work, I think that's going to be true, but especially in NFL where obviously salaries and, you know, it's a lot of it's just kind of public information. So quickly, I'll go through these teams. We're just going to give the ranks now. So the Saints at 11, again, team ownership gets an A minus, food and dining gets an A minus Giants at 25th. General Manager gets a D plus F minus for home game field. So we talked a little bit about that New York Jets. Same thing. Home game field F minus. They come in 18th overall head coach and

general manager both A and A minus respectively. The Eagles come in at 20th. General manager in team ownership getting a B head coach get an A. Team travel gets an F as well as the locker room got a D. So kind of dragging that down there. Home game field got an A. We went over the steel. dealers last in the league, an F for treatment of families, F minus home game fields, F minus locker room, but they like their head coach, gave him a nay. You know, at the end of the day, just get the right guy in place. Hopefully some more dominoes fall into line. Yes, yes.

49ers get come out 14th A minus head coach, general manager and team ownership, as well as home game field. No F's in there for them. It's funny home game field with the whole electromagnetic plant or whatever the heck is going by their practice field. Maybe that reporting came out too late and this could be an F next year. Stay tuned. Yeah, yeah.

All that can come out again. This was kind of midseason October. I think I had it somewhere up here like, yeah, November 2nd to December 11th. So a little past midseason, but in there. See, we're around 49th. Seahawks, fourth overall, kind of mentioned them. General manager, head coach, team ownership, all gets an A. A lot of A's in this.

The only problem, an F home game. field. Whoops. Still good for fourth. Buccaneers coming at 2019. Ownership gets a D. General manager gets an A minus. Home game field F minus.

There's a lot of Fs on this. For home game fields, that's something that needs to be worked on. They also got an F for team travel. Titans 24th, A plus special teams coordinator. Hey, hey. Great pick.

Is that the highest? Is that the highest great? No, oh, tied with Jacksonville. Oh, yeah. With Jacksonville is an A plus special teams coordinator. Again, you're doing something right there in Tennessee. but F-minus home game field still need to work on that.

Commanders coming at third. We mentioned A-plus team ownership. A little bit different than the ownership of the past. Head coach is A-plus, Dinner Manager A. They got A-plus for strength. There's a lot of A-pluses on this for them. Home game field, not too bad.

B-plus for the final team on our list. Yeah. You take it. Yeah. You know, and just wrapping it up kind of big picture, I can understand why the NFL and the owners wouldn't want stuff like this published. Right.

Now, I also don't think that this is necessarily disparaging or damaging, you know, to do the NFL or to its brand. To me, this would be a kick in the pants. Well, you know, no one likes being called out when whatever you're doing or not doing is substandard. But if I was the NFL or if I was Roger Goodell specifically, and I know he works for the owners, and I'm sure there are plenty of them that were, you know, offended by this. Well, how dare they give me this great? I'm great to my players, whatever. but this is where I think, you know,

Goodell is not, shouldn't just be there to represent the owners in what they want. At some point, Roger Goodell's kind of kind of stand up to that room and say, hey, this should be good for us. You know, yeah, it might be painful. But there are very easy ways that you can fix this, right? You can sit down with your players and have these conversations.

You can invite them into your office. You can, you know, spend a little bit more. I mean, the salary cap grew another 22 million this year for the NFL. There's money available. And, you know, if I'm Roger Goodell, I'm saying, I'm not telling you how to run your business. It's your team. You know, I think the league's in a pretty healthy spot. I think all you owners are doing, you know, a good enough and adequate job. But use this as constructive feedback, right? Sure, you'll get some, you know, discruntled

players that leave a comment anonymously and that might not sit right with you. But being able to remove yourself from those, you know, little petty pointed criticisms and more being able to take that, that whole picture of the organization, you know, this is what the players really like. This is what they don't, I would think that'd be incredibly motivating, you know, if you're trying to win, if you're trying to win a good organization. But if all it is, is, you know, an investment project on the side, I can understand how, you know, these owners would not care, let stuff, you know, go into disrepair or just say, eh, whatever they think, don't do it. Just don't talk bad about me, you know, because my name and my other business ventures is more important to me than my name in the

NFL circle. Yeah, yeah, a lot of different thoughts and feelings in there. And again, how much of these rankings matter to, to, to, uh, to, to, to, uh, to, to, to, uh, to, to, to, organization is going to be depending on on the owner and in and in who's kind of stepping in there. You never know. I mean, it's kind of similar to, you know, discussions we have around here, not necessarily about that, but when you're when you're talking about, you know, the athletic department as a whole compared to your, you know, some, some owners are probably just going to want to their football team to win. Right. And that's going to be the most important more than anything on this list. So we'll talk, we'll, we have another hour here of one-on-one,

myself, Jake Bucking, Austin Orman. Coming up next, we've been asking for somebody to fix college football. There's a bunch of people going to get in the room. Prominent people going to get in a room and try to discuss more about college sports. We'll talk about that.