INDIANAPOLIS — The NFLPA report playing cards are subjective, unscientific surveys about participant working circumstances with unclear measurements and classes that already shifted inside a 12 months’s time.
They will not be gospel. They shouldn’t be learn as gospel or consumed as absolute referendums on any group. But in fact, when greater than 1,700 gamers reply, good for a mean of 53 gamers per franchise, they need to additionally not be ignored.
And if the Patriots are listening, their grades are screaming one factor: begin packing for summer time faculty.
Two failing grades — for his or her weight room and therapy of participant households — is embarrassment alone. But rating fourth-worst total within the league? Receiving worse grades in nearly each class in comparison with a 12 months in the past, together with greater than half the place they ranked within the backside 10?
For a first-class franchise? Under an possession group that insists over and over it has no spending limits? Seriously?
It’s time to pay up, or shut up.
It’s not sufficient the Patriots have already begun to modernize and transfer their weight room forward of subsequent season. It’s not sufficient they might repair their different “F” by merely including a household room, an amenity supplied by 28 different groups within the league. If the Patriots ever need to be the Patriots once more, Robert Kraft should be part of Jerod Mayo and Eliot Wolf within the rebuild, crack open his pockets and finance his soccer operations again to the highest.
Fix it. The lackluster journey and coaching employees, too. All of it. Champions act like champions earlier than they’re topped. That begins with possession.
The subsequent time Kraft desires to remind us for the 1,834th time he was as soon as a season ticket holder on the metallic bleachers of Foxboro Stadium, he ought to contemplate the followers freezing in Gillette Stadium final December; how they paid the third-highest ticket costs within the league, whereas the offense fell to mud, the group floundered to its third shedding file in 4 seasons and gamers seemed round believing they’d be higher off lifting at a Planet Fitness.
Where else in leisure — overlook sports activities — may any command high greenback for a product like that?
Kraft, like all NFL house owners, certainly is aware of he has followers by the household jewels. Football is an American dependancy. We will sacrifice nearly something on the altar of the NFL to expertise the joys of one other two-minute drill or afternoon with RedZone.
NFL house owners have by no means been richer, extra comfy or extra highly effective. And that’s exactly why the report card exists.
Officially, the NFLPA created the report card final 12 months to “highlight positive clubs, identify areas that could use improvement, and highlight best practices and standards.” Unofficially, it’s a flex to use public strain on the league’s strongest individuals and have an effect on labor change. The query now’s: how a lot does Kraft care?
If Kraft feels stung, he may be comforted by the age-old knowledge and staple public relations recommendation: this too shall go. The NFL will drown Wednesday’s report playing cards with Thursday’s information about quarterbacks, exercises, rumors and different sizzling air from the mix. All shall be forgotten and forgiven.
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But if followers are fortunate, that will not be ok for Kraft. Again, this was not a media ballot, nor suggestions from staffers or coaches. These have been gamers. Players who aired out the group’s soiled, stinking laundry and pinned an image of Kraft’s face on it whereas scribbling an enormous, crimson “D+” over his face.
Pause.
Sidebar No. 1: cries about millionaire gamers bemoaning work circumstances in skilled sports activities miss a few key info: these gamers are the NFL’s labor and the product, that means not solely are they higher at your job than you’re and my job than I’m, however they’re exponentially extra invaluable. Relatedly, their compensation is artificially curbed by a wage cap billionaire house owners put in to guard themselves from spending each other into aggressive oblivion.
In an open market, NFL gamers would make way over they do as we speak. That unknowable determine is what they’re price, not their present salaries.
Sidebar No. 2 : Do not learn this report card as some drained blame pie for the Patriots’ post-Brady issues break up between Belichick versus Kraft. They have been each complicit within the franchise’s downfall. More to the purpose, Belichick earned an similar rating — twenty seventh out of 32 head coaches — albeit with a kinder “B-” grade as a result of gamers have been kinder to their direct bosses than their boss’ boss. (Only three coaches obtained grades decrease than a “B-,” whereas 11 house owners did.)
Belichick is gone as a result of he had full management over the Patriots’ soccer operations throughout a four-year span when the group went 29-39. The Pats suffered from fractured teaching staffs, dangerous drafts, a damaged quarterback and a draining tradition.
No NFL head coach or GM survives a four-year span like that, not to mention when these peoeple are one and the identical. Belichick did not. The disgrace, ache, frustration failure have been an excessive amount of for the Krafts, who determined to maneuver on two months earlier than they really did.
So what do they really feel now? What will they do?
The report card, nonetheless imprecise and flawed, delivered a transparent message concerning the state of the franchise from inside the facility. Nothing could possibly be extra damning.
Will the Krafts pay attention?
Source: www.bostonherald.com