Key Takeaways And Free Consultative Advice On The NFLPA Players Survey Results

Yesterday, the NFLPA came out with the results of the "Team Report Cards" in which 1300 players during the 2022 season responded. You can see the results laid out quite nicely by the trustworthy Twitter account above with an avi of the (evidently) Ukrainian and (evidently) male melting snowman. As someone with experience in analyzing employee engagement surveys, I think it's only appropriate to provide some free consultative advice based on my analysis of these results for some parties involved. 

Advice #1: NEVER release employee engagement results unless you plan on doing something about it!

OK, this advice only works when the actual employer is giving the survey - not when a representative union does so to railroad the company. I have to assume teams had no choice to opt out which tells me this entire thing was a ploy from the players union to take shots at certain teams. That's petty as hell and you know what - I respect the fuck out of that. They even went ahead and re-coded the Likert 1-5 scale into a school grade format so the internet could all destroy the teams that absolutely failed. In more professional settings, a team would have the results communicated in a more constructive fashion with positives pointed out for encouragement first to soften the blow of needed changes. For example - to pick a team at complete random here - the Commanders team report might look like:

• Strengths: Fantastic strength coaches!!
• Areas for improvement: everything else

Advice #2: The Baltimore Ravens exceled in travel coordination and have a great locker room (positive). An area of improvement might be to consider not having severely injured players overwhelm more Baltimore area medical trauma professionals than the Battle of Baltimore.

See, that's how consultancy is done. To show you what I mean, let's now take a look at Baltimore Ravens training camp on day one of basically every single year ever:

Remember, the client is paying you to tell them what they want to hear, but it's your job to figure out how to do this without lying. You have to build them up first, then offer them a general piece of advice that builds a bridge to the obvious answer (FIRE THE GODDAMN FUCKING STRENGTH COACHES) without telling them that explicitly. This way they can (god willing) figure it out for themselves and feel like they are the smart ones. That's the only way they'll actually be willing to do something about it. 

If they still struggle figuring it all out with the colorful boxes above, hand Ravens ownership this and say: "I don't know if this means anything or not, but maybe you can find some use for it…"

Advice #3: The Washington Commanders should trade their A+ rating strength coach to the Ravens for Lamar Jackson

Literally the only trade-worthy piece the Commanders have in any way, shape, or form is their strength coaches. Mind you only five teams didn't give their at least an A-, but with word on the street that the Ravens strength coaches are literally destroying their players, and with the stand still between the Ravens and Lamar Jackson's agent (Lamar Jackson), I think you have to at least pick up the phone here.

Advice #4: Despite winning the Super Bowl, the Chiefs can still improve

There's nothing you can do about the D+ in "Food Service / Nutrition". It's probably written into Andy Reid and Patrick Mahome's contracts to have cheeseburgers every day and ketchup pre-served on any red meat. But while most of the Chiefs grades were poor, the only big fat F was in "Team Travel". You might wonder why this was, but as a professional data sleuth I can see it as clear as day. The Chiefs top score outside of "Strength Coaches" was a B for "Treatment of Families". Let's go ahead and sacrifice that B just a little bit and kick Jackson Mahomes off any future team flight. That outta do it.

Advice #5 The Colts will need to improve on their A+ in "Training Staff" if they want to be in the upper quartile of the upper quartile

The Colts are one of only eight teams to get an A+ in "Training Staff" which puts them in the upper quartile. They'll need to get that A++ though if they want to get to the upper quartile of that upper quartile.

That was fun. I hope they run this back next year. Let's hope enough Raven's players are still alive to fill out the form.

- Jeffro