The NFL attempted to keep the NFL Players Association’s 2026 report cards hidden. However, it was only a matter of time before someone in the media obtained the results.
ESPN’s Kalyn Kahler was the first to break the news, landing one of her biggest scoops. She obtained the results of the annual survey that ranks franchises from A-plus to F-minus across categories like ownership and family treatment. We recently spoke with Kahler, a senior NFL reporter for ESPN since July 2024, to discuss how she broke the story.
Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Awful Announcing: How did this story first get on your radar?
Kalyn Kahler: “Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham reported the existence of this grievance and lawsuit in the fall. Ever since then, I have wondered what would happen with this. So it was kind of on my radar then. A couple of weeks before the combine, the decision came down that the union had lost the grievance and the NFL had won. But it was an interesting decision because the arbitrator didn’t say to the NFLPA, ‘You can’t do it anymore.’ All it said was, “You can’t make it public.” I was like, it’s weird that this is being characterized as a victory for the NFL. It was sort of a half-win because it wasn’t really going to do anything, because at that point, the union had already done the work. They’d already collected all their results.”
Could you explain why it was always going to be difficult for the NFL to keep this information quiet?
“Clearly, the information is going to get out. How many NFL players are there? They’re all part of the union. How many of them have NFL agents? Well, most of them have agents. They’re probably going to share the information with their agents. And then they’ll share the information with their family members, right? So once you send the results to a pool of 2,000 union members, all of whom have relatives, many people will be receiving these results. So, it was really just a matter of being organized and knowing that they’ll probably release them during the combine, as they always do. I didn’t know how they would release the results to the membership, but I just had to stay organized.”
We got the NFLPA report card results: Miami ranked 1st for the 3rd year in a row. Pittsburgh ranked last- 32nd- in part because of a new category- HOME FIELD- that the Steelers ranked last in. “lowest rated field by a wide margin,” the survey said. https://t.co/1U6zsvNXck
— Kalyn Kahler (@kalynkahler) February 26, 2026
How did you first find out?
“It was funny because I was at the combine around a bunch of other NFL reporters when I was notified that the union had released the results. I was about a 10-minute walk from my hotel room. I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I have to go.’ I just started power walking, running through the hallways to get back to my hotel room. I couldn’t be around anyone else while I was doing this because I had to make several phone calls to discuss the stuff out loud. I had to go somewhere where I could shut the door, not run into anyone, and not get distracted. So, yeah, it worked out pretty well.”
What made reporting the story challenging?
“It was about midday when players received the results from the union. I’m not going to say exactly how I found out about it, but I got the information. From there, it was really difficult because the union presented the data in a really inconvenient way in terms of trying to make sense of it. It was never in numerical order. So, they weren’t ranking the teams one through 32. It was just alphabetical. You could sort by category to see which team had the best grade in this category. But it still wasn’t necessarily ranked.”
How fast did you work?
“I want to get the info out ASAP because I knew this was going to be really competitive. I thought over 2,000 people had this information now. So we did the news story first, which was also challenging. I’m not going to say what format I received the results in, but it was not easy to parse through. It was tough because I was racing against the clock, but I also wanted to be right. It felt like dealing with a jumbled mess. We had to do the top three quickly. We also had to do the bottom three. We need to get this out there ASAP.
“Then, my editor and I had to make our own spreadsheet because, as I said, the way the NFLPA presents this, it’s not actually in any ranked order. It’s just alphabetical. So we were going through a spreadsheet at the same time. My editor was inputting the grades into this spreadsheet, going through every column. ‘OK, is this correct?’ There are just so many data points, so many categories, so many grades. It had to be formatted and presented to the reader so that it could make sense. That was the real challenge.”
Did someone come close to beating you?
“I think everybody knew this information was going to leak at some point. Actually, a Packers reporter, Aaron Nagler, tweeted the Packers’ grades before I got my story up. That was also going to happen. Individual teams, reporters were going to start getting that information as the players, the family members of the players, and the agents of the players were starting to get that information.”
Why should this information be public?
“It’s really important for transparency. The purpose of this survey has been, and still is, to share what players think about their workplace. It got results. This survey produced a lot of improvements for players. I think there are a lot of fans who are like, ‘Oh, cry me a river. They make millions of dollars. Who cares if they get lunch provided to them or not?’ But the Players’ Union’s job is to advocate for players and improve their working conditions. There was an anecdote from the first survey. There were rats in Jacksonville’s facility. Now they have a brand-new facility that is not at their stadium. And they probably don’t have a rat problem anymore.”
What other detail about this do you find fascinating?
“The next CBA expires in 2030. We’re probably about a year and a half to two years away from them starting serious negotiations. JC Tretter explained to me last summer that the surveys they conduct are not just for improving current working conditions. It’s also about what players care about for the next CBA. So, I don’t know this for certain, but there might be questions they ask players that are not included in the survey we’ve seen, that they’re holding on to for collective bargaining purposes.”
Happy birthday @peter_king!
Glad to spend it with you, Ann and the very good white Sox!! pic.twitter.com/MCDvtB3AEF
— Kalyn Kahler (@kalynkahler) June 11, 2021
It seems like in trying to silence this, the owners drew more attention to it. Did they make a tactical error?
“Yeah, you could argue that. I don’t know. Either way, I think this was going to create headlines. I will say they made it harder to get the information out and present it. I guess they achieved something in that regard. And there are still certain bits and pieces of this that haven’t seen the full light of day. This is very in the weeds, but every team has a page with anecdotes written by the players. This is one of the things the league had a big problem with because they felt like the players’ union was cherry-picking quotes and then paraphrasing them into their own words.”
What was it like working for Peter King?
“I couldn’t have had a better start to my journalism career. Peter was the best boss ever. He’s so funny. I was an editorial assistant and personal assistant, making his schedule, booking hotels and rental cars, setting up radio interviews, and transcribing. He knew I was hungry for more. He let me sit in on an interview with Dan Quinn, for example, during training camp when Quinn was the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. He always went out of his way to expose me, as a very young journalist, to important people. I can’t thank him enough for that.”