At least JJ Watt is consistent.
Throughout last season, the NFL on CBS analyst had two pet issues all season on game broadcasts, as well as his appearances on The Pat McAfee Show: the NFLPA report cards and Pro Football Focus’s presence on NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcasts.
With the former, Watt was vocal in his defense of the NFLPA’s freedom to continue collecting and publishing its annual player report cards. These report cards assign grades to each team across a range of issues, including team amenities, head coaching, and ownership.
The practice began in 2023, but the league filed a grievance against the union last fall to stifle the release of the results. Watt hammered the NFL, accusing the league of “suppressing” players’ voices by trying to eliminate the “one little thing that the players have” to hold teams accountable.
Watt was also one of several former players who were critical of the use of PFF player grades on Sunday nights. The former Defensive Player of the Year called PFF’s metrics “completely made up” and said he hoped NBC would stop displaying them during player introductions.
On Friday, an independent arbitrator ruled on behalf of the NFL in its grievance over the NFLPA report cards. And in a post on X, Watt contrasted the ruling with the league’s acceptance of NBC and PFF displaying grades on-air.
“NFL won’t let actual players grade the workplace they attend every single day,” Watt wrote, “but they’ll allow a 3rd party “grading” service to display their “rankings” of players on national television every Sunday night…”
NFL won’t let actual players grade the workplace they attend every single day, but they’ll allow a 3rd party “grading” service to display their “rankings” of players on national television every Sunday night… https://t.co/JBQXOgFZIN
— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) February 13, 2026
Watt illustrates an interesting disparity here.
The NFLPA report cards can be looked at as players’ attempt to flip the script and show how well owners, general managers, and head coaches perform. So much of the NFL content ecosystem is designed around evaluating players, but the impact of good or bad ownership on a team’s performance is largely overlooked.
Watt believes the NFL is hypocritical for opposing the union’s ability to publish these results while also allowing NBC to showcase similar metrics measuring players on Sunday Night Football.
Even if the two situations are not exactly apples-to-apples, Watt is going deeper on NFL players’ labor issues than just about any commentator in the industry.
The NFLPA announced later Friday that it would continue the report cards, but keep the results in-house. The NFL and NFLPA are expected to work together to develop a public report card specifically covering players’ views of team medical staff.