NFL’s newest owner joins the club of taking stock of low grades on NFLPA report card

ORLANDO, Fla. — Josh Harris, the NFL’s newest owner, certainly feels the sting from the low grades given to the Washington Commanders on the most recent report card from the NFL Players Association.

“I’m not an F-minus guy,” Harris said at the conclusion of the NFL owners meetings this week.

He knows. It’s nothing personal. That the Commanders ranked dead last overall among NFL teams in the league-wide survey of players that rated workplace conditions and support from key figures in the organization was something else he inherited from his embattled predecessor, Dan Snyder.

The Commanders were marked with “F-minus” grades in five categories — treatment of families, the locker room, the training room, the training staff and team travel — in a survey taken not long after Harris led the group that paid a record $6.05 billion for the franchise in late July.

“Obviously, we jumped all over that,” Harris, speaking to a small media group that included USA TODAY Sports, said of the survey.

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He added that his new general manager, Adam Peters, and new coach, Dan Quinn, left the meetings briefly for a discussion with architects involved with designs for upgrading the team’s small, outdated training facility in suburban Ashburn, Virginia.

“We’re trying to make a lot of changes very quickly,” Harris said. “Obviously, it starts with the NFL player community is a small community. The NFL coach community is a small community. We want to be a place where everyone says, ‘That’s a great place to be.’ Therefore, we need to upgrade that facility.”

Harris, who earned a “B” on the survey for willingness to invest in facilities, said that priorities include renovating the players lounge and “refinishing a bunch of things.”

“There’s only so much we can do by the start of training camp,” he added. “We have a lot more planned, in terms of looking at the playing surface itself, looking at the locker room, looking at the bathroom facilities. So, everything we can do right now to make our players feel great about coming to work, feel comfortable, we’re going to do.”

Ultimately, the Commanders will build new headquarters. The location and timing for that will depend on the much bigger issue of striking a deal for a new stadium, which could happen in Washington, D.C., Virginia or Maryland. It’s possible, if not probable, that the team will land in a stadium in one jurisdiction while training in another, as it does now.

“You kind of want to look at it holistically,” Harris said.

Of course, the Commanders were hardly the only team put on blast by the second annual NFLPA survey. The Kansas City Chiefs ranked 31^st  — despite winning back-to-back Super Bowls — and were criticized for not following through on promised renovations at their training facility.

Getting shamed hasn’t hurt. Chiefs owner Clark Hunt (given an “F-minus”) told The Athletic that the team is upgrading with an air conditioning system and larger cafeteria at their training facility.

“We are making some pretty significant investments,” Hunt said. “We’ve outgrown that building in a number of ways.”

Similarly, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is reinvesting more than $50 million on a new workout facility.

“I must tell you, I was unaware of how bad it was,” Kraft told reporters, via Boston.com.

Then again, not every owner was moved by the NFLPA’s Report Card. Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II said that a renovation of the weight room at the team’s South Side headquarters was already in the works when the survey was released in late February. The Steelers ranked 28^th overall.

Rooney, who received an “F-minus” for willingness to invest in the facilities, maintained that the criticism would be more constructive if it came with dialogue.

“We have an open door,” Rooney told USA TODAY Sports. “If players want to talk about their needs, that’s fine.”

Interestingly, while Rooney received one of the lowest grades for an owner, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin received one of the highest marks in the league with an “A.” That’s similar to the contrast in Kansas City, with Andy Reid graded the highest of any coach in the league.

No, Rooney hardly sees himself as an “F-minus” guy.

“The most important thing for me, and I think our veteran players know this: If they need something, they can come in and talk about it,” Rooney said. “And we do the best we can. We do have limitations, square footage issues that we’re dealing with. But it’s not that we’re sitting here and won’t change anything. Let’s improve every year if we can.”

Rest assured, they are keeping score.