Employment & Labor Insider

In August 2025, the National Football League filed a grievance against the NFL Players Association concerning the union’s annual release of Team Report Cards in which the union, based on a survey of its player members, grades the 32 teams in the NFL on their treatment of families, food, support staff, travel, training facilities, coaches, and ownership. 

The NFL argued, among other things, that the Report Cards violated a provision of the collective bargaining agreement in which the parties agreed to try to “curtail … criticism” of each other. In an Opinion and Award issued on February 12, an arbitrator partially sustained the NFL’s grievance – while also providing the Players Association with a path to basically continue what it has been doing.

The NFL’s grievance

The NFL alleged that the Report Cards violated two provisions of the collective bargaining agreement: (1) Article 39, Section 5(c)(iv), which contemplates a confidential player survey about their medical care every three years; and (2) Article 51, Section 6, which states as follows:

Public Statements: The [Players Association] and the [NFL] Management Council agree that each will use reasonable efforts to curtail public comments by Club personnel or players which express criticism of any club, its coach, or its operation and policy, or which tend to cast discredit upon a Club, a player, or any other person involved in the operation of a Club, the NFL, the Management Council, or the [Players Association].

The Players Association response

First, the Players Association argued that Article 51, Section 6, violates Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act. Section 7 of the NLRA provides employees the right “to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” As explained in my prior post on this dispute, “[t]he Supreme Court has interpreted this provision as a broad right of employees to communicate freely with each other about workplace issues and to share information relevant to their employment conditions.”

Second, the union contended that Article 51, Section 6 restricts the speech of players, not of the Players Association, and thus does not apply to the Team Report Cards issued by the Players Association.

Third, the union argued that it had complied with Article 51, Section 6’s “reasonable efforts” requirement by “anonymizing all Player responses with no attribution and surrounding negative commentary with positive or constructive feedback.”

Fourth, the union posited that the NFL’s position that the Team Report Cards interfere with the Article 39 survey was merely theoretical because the NFL has refused to conduct one since 2015.

The arbitrator’s award

At the outset, arbitrator Scott E. Buchheit agreed with the Players Association’s position concerning Article 39 and held that “no active dispute over an Article 39 survey currently exists over which I have jurisdiction.” He further rejected the assertion by the NFL and its expert witness “that the two surveys could never co-exist.”

Next, the arbitrator did generally find in the NFL’s favor on the alleged violation of Article 51.  The arbitrator found that the Report Cards “contain numerous criticisms” of clubs and that the Players Association had not made “reasonable efforts to curtail public Player criticism of Clubs.”

Further to this finding, he held that the “[Players Association] agreed to a clear and unmistakable waiver of whatever rights it would otherwise have pursuant to the National Labor Relations Act[.]”  While acknowledging that the Players Association had presented “substantial case law” in support of its position to the contrary, and without citing or analyzing any of that case law in his opinion, the arbitrator declared it “distinguishable” from the instant case.

Did the NFL win?

In a memorandum to clubs, the NFL declared that it had won the grievance, a position echoed by ESPN. 

The arbitrator directed “that the [Players Association] refrain from placing the 2026 Report Cards on the public portion of its website” and “from making public disclosure of these Report Cards,” or making any critical comments based on the results of the Report Cards. 

However, the league may want to hold off on the touchdown dance. The arbitrator said “[t]he [Players Association] can still release the 2026 Report Card to its members, complete with letter grades and criticisms such as those contained in the 2025 Report Cards, and it can still post the 2026 Report Cards on the private, members-only portion of its website.”

And there’s the rub. The Players Association has approximately 2,000 player members. Content available to players is also usually also available to the roughly 1,000 union-certified agents. Thus, while the arbitrator said in a footnote that the Players Association “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 only takes one leak.

The resulting state of affairs thus seems to be as follows:

• The Players Association can continue creating the Team Report Cards.
• The Players Association can disclose those Report Cards only to the players and probably also their agents.
• The Players Association will tell players and agents not to leak the Report Cards.
• Someone will leak the Report Cards to a journalist.
• The NFL will not be able to determine who leaked the Report Cards.

So while the criticism contained in the Report Cards may be partially muted in the future, expect it to continue – and for there to be future grievances over the issue.