The NFL is going into its 12th week of the season, and the league has its share of Super Bowl contenders as well as terrible franchises. As the season progresses, the truly terrible teams will become even more obvious if they are not already. The AFC North has the Cincinnati Bengals and Cleveland Browns, who are both struggling with injuries and have had their starting quarterbacks go down at some point this season. The Raiders, who beat the now 9-2 New England Patriots in week one, have fallen on hard times only beating the 1-9 Tennessee Titans since then. Speaking of Tennessee, the Titans continue to lose and their only win was against the now 3-7 Cardinals, so that win does not do them many favors. The NFC East is pretty rough with the notable exception of the Philadelphia Eagles, and the New Orleans Saints are 2-8 going into their divisional game against the Falcons on Sunday. One of the most dysfunctional franchises in the league, unsurprisingly, has only two wins against teams that have no more than three wins themselves, that team being the New York Jets.
With the Jets struggling, it came as no surprise that when the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) released their team report cards, a yearly release of anonymous players grading their own teams, the Jets owner got an F. It is always risky to criticize the ownership, but for the Jets, the players did not hold back. Since an F is hard to come by in the report cards when referring to people, it is a little jarring to see an owner get a really low grade, but that shows how bad things are. The Jets are 2-8 with no real hope for the playoffs, but the team’s lowest rating was their ownership, and the other lowest things were locker rooms at D+ and several C. The owner of the Jets, Woody Johnson, has been one of several owners that have not been popular among their fanbase. This year he is the only owner to receive an F and now the NFL led by its owners have filed a “grievance against NFLPA” to stop the yearly report cards according to ESPN and other sources. While the individuals who are pushing this grievance are unknown, it can not help that the NFLPA gives honest scores that might lead to unhappy owners.
The data for the report cards are collected from the previous year, and the cards exist to help raise the standards of the league, according to the NFLPA website. If the cards go away, it will be more difficult for the union to show what the players want out of the league’s franchises. As the playoff hunt continues, these bad teams will continue to fall into high draft picks, and unless owners address problems properly, the odds of next season being better for the worst teams will be lower than the Jet’s Supper Bowl hopes.
