The NFL’s newest owner has joined the group that evaluates the NFLPA report card’s poor marks.
The Washington Commanders’ poor marks on the most recent NFL Players Association report card hurt, especially for Josh Harris, the team’s newest owner.
Harris declared, “I’m not an F-minus guy,” at the end of this week’s NFL owners meetings.
He is aware. Nothing about it is personal. Another issue he inherited from his troubled predecessor, Dan Snyder, was that the Commanders finished dead last among the NFL teams in the league-wide survey of players who rated workplace conditions and support from key leaders in the organization.
The Commanders were marked with “F-minus” grades in five categories — treatment of families, the locker room, the training room, the training staff and team travel — in a survey taken not long after Harris led the group that paid a record $6.05 billion for the franchise in late July.
“Obviously, we jumped all over that,” Harris, speaking to a small media group that included USA TODAY Sports, said of the survey.
He added that his new general manager, Adam Peters, and new coach, Dan Quinn, left the meetings briefly for a discussion with architects involved with designs for upgrading the team’s small, outdated training facility in suburban Ashburn, Virginia.
“We’re trying to make a lot of changes very quickly,” Harris said. “Obviously, it starts with the NFL player community is a small community. The NFL coach community is a small community. We want to be a place where everyone says, ‘That’s a great place to be.’ Therefore, we need to upgrade that facility.”
Harris, who earned a “B” on the survey for willingness to invest in facilities, said that priorities include renovating the players lounge and “refinishing a bunch of things.”
“There’s only so much we can do by the start of training camp,” he added. “We have a lot more planned, in terms of looking at the playing surface itself, looking at the locker room, looking at the bathroom facilities. Consequently, we will take all the necessary steps as soon as possible to ensure that our players are at ease and excited about coming to work.
The Commanders will eventually construct a new headquarters. The timing and location of that will be determined by the resolution of the much larger matter of negotiating a new stadium, which may take place in Washington, D.C., Virginia, or Maryland. The team could, and probably will, land in a stadium in one jurisdiction while practicing in another, as it does at the moment.
Harris stated, “You kind of want to look at it holistically.”
Of course, the Commanders were hardly the only team put on blast by the second annual NFLPA survey. The Kansas City Chiefs ranked 31st — despite winning back-to-back Super Bowls — and were criticized for not following through on promised renovations at their training facility.
Getting shamed hasn’t hurt. Chiefs owner Clark Hunt (given an “F-minus”) told The Athletic that the team is upgrading with an air conditioning system and larger cafeteria at their training facility.
“We are making some pretty significant investments,” Hunt said. “We’ve outgrown that building in a number of ways.”
Similarly, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is reinvesting more than $50 million on a new workout facility.
“I must tell you, I was unaware of how bad it was,” Kraft told reporters, via Boston.com.
Then again, not every owner was moved by the NFLPA’s Report Card. Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II said that a renovation of the weight room at the team’s South Side headquarters was already in the works when the survey was released in late February. The Steelers ranked 28th overall.
Rooney, who received an “F-minus” for willingness to invest in the facilities, maintained that the criticism would be more constructive if it came with dialogue.
“We have an open door,” Rooney told USA TODAY Sports. “If players want to talk about their needs, that’s fine.”
Interestingly, while Rooney received one of the lowest grades for an owner, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin received one of the highest marks in the league with an “A.” That’s similar to the contrast in Kansas City, with Andy Reid graded the highest of any coach in the league.
No, Rooney doesn’t really think of himself as a “F-minus” guy.
The most crucial thing, in Rooney’s opinion—and I believe our seasoned players are aware of this—is that they can come in and chat about anything they need. And we exert all of our effort. We do have some restrictions and problems with square footage. It’s not like we’re idling here doing nothing, though. If we can, let’s get better each year.
You can be sure they’re keeping score.
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