The report cards are in, and all 32 NFL teams can now check their grades.
No, seriously. In the 2022 season the NFL sent out questionnaires to every player on a team's roster. They got back 1,300 of them, and this week released the results broken down by each team. The New Orleans Saints got mostly high marks and landed at No. 10 in the NFL.
"It was really important to highlight the teams that are doing things well and where players are happy," reads a note NFL Players Association President JC Tretter describing the project. "It makes a big difference when players go to work feeling supported by their club, and we want our members to know which clubs make players feel that way based on the responses from some who were on that club during this past year."
The Saints landed high marks in every category except for one, and it's a bit puzzling when you consider the locale: The team's dining hall.
Here's how the categories broke down:
- Treatment of families: B+
- Nutrition: F-
- Weight room: A-
- Training room: A
- Training staff: A-
- Locker room: A
- Travel: A+
And the team was thaaaaaat close to the honor roll this year. That was mostly a joke. The nutrition grade sticks out like a sore thumb among that group, but the survey did give a few reasons as to why.
The Saints are one of only three teams that don't provide dinner at the facility, according to the survey, though they do provide a late lunches after noon practices. A majority of responding players also found that the cafeteria was too small.
One thing that wasn't specified was the actual number of players from each roster that participated, but the rest of the scores leave it to be assuming that a large percentage of the roster was happy with how the franchise treated them. Providing that type of information to prospective free agents was a major idea spurring the project in the first place.
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"If knowledge is really power, then providing players with information about each club would not only help them make important career decisions," read Tretter's note, "but it would also help raise the standards across each club."
It's meant to also be used as a resource by players who might have spent the entirety of their career on one team, and wouldn't know if things were done differently elsewhere.
The team tied for first in travel, with players indicating they had plenty of space on the team plane. Players were also happy with the weight room and training room, and indicated they felt they had the best locker room in the NFL.
An interesting element was the training staff, which was graded at A-, though that's a bit misleading. A majority of team staffs was graded high, which isn't a bad thing, but 14 NFL teams graded better in that category. The Saints have struggled through significant injury woes in each of the past few seasons.
The full report has some fascinating insight into the NFL's other 31 teams, though it doesn't always seem to match up with overall success. The Chiefs have made it to three of the past four Super Bowls, for instance, and are tied for last in the NFL in terms of this report card. They received a D+ or lower in nutrition, training room, training staff, locker room and travel.
The rest of the NFC South also didn't grade out particularly well. The Falcons landed two Cs and two Ds, the Bucs had an F, two Ds and two Cs. Oddly, the Panthers, a team that fired much of its staff midseason, logged generally high marks with one D, four Bs and two As.
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For the full grades, click here.