Chiefs Players Rank Club 31st in NFLPA Report Card

INDIANAPOLIS — On the field, the Kansas City Chiefs are the back-to-back Super Bowl champions, but inside their facility players rank the team 31st in the league on the NFL Players Association club report card issued Wednesday.

That’s a drop of two spots in the rankings from last year’s inaugural report card in which the club ranked 29th. This year only the Washington Commanders delivered a lower grade than the Chiefs, which received an F grade from the NFLPA in the locker room, training staff and nutritionist/dietician categories. Yet the club received even a lower grade in the ownership category with chairman/CEO Clark Hunt receiving an F-minus. Players rated Hunt a 4.9 out of 10 on his willingness to invest in facilities including the locker room, weight and training rooms and family facilities.

Unkept promises and a perceived unwillingness to invest in facilities drove the team’s low rankings, according to NFLPA president JC Tretter.

“I think there’s some frustration there out of that locker room of, ‘We keep winning Super Bowls and nothing’s coming back to us,'” Tretter said. “There’s no priority on making our lives better but we keep making your organization more money and more fame, so I think that’s kind of reflected in their results.”

Tretter pointed to the Chiefs’ locker room in their training facility. He said the club committed to making improvements to the locker room during the 2023 offseason but after the team’s Super Bowl LVII over the Philadelphia Eagles those plans were dashed.

“They promised them a brand new locker room, they’re gonna renovate, it’s been a while,” Tretter said. “The team went on to win the Super Bowl, they then came back to the same old locker room, but with new chairs was the only renovation. And the answer they got back was, ‘You guys want too far in the playoffs, we didn’t have time to fix it.'”

The NFLPA tweaked the survey from its debut last season. The food service/nutrition category was broken down into two distinct areas, food/cafeteria and nutritionist/dietician while the survey added categories for head coach and ownership.

It was the head coach’s grade where the Chiefs stood out ahead of the class. Andy Reid ranked No. 1 in the league with a 9.77 rating out of 10. Reid received high marks for his willingness to listen to the locker room, and 95% of players feel he is efficient with their time.

Other observations from the survey:

• The club’s grade for treatment of families fell from a B to a D-plus this year with a number of players wanting the club to provide daycare services on site. The Chiefs do provide daycare for players on game day across the street from the stadium.
• Only 37% of players feel they get an individualized nutrition plan and faulted the team’s dietician for not being present at the facility more frequently.
• Just 48% of players feel the club has enough full-time physical therapists and only 66% of players feel they have enough full-time trainers, ranking 31st in the league in both categories.
• Rick Burkholder, the team’s vice president of sports medicine and performance, received the second-lowest grade among the league’s head athletic trainers. A league-low 43% of players feel they received enough one-on-one treatment and “a number of players feel like the staff is not willing to provide support/treatment to all players.
• A majority of the team’s players believe the club’s weight room is no better than offsite locations where they could train.
• The team’s strength coaches ranking fell from an A-minus to a C-plus. This was the first season as the head strength and conditioning/director of sports science for Ryan Reynolds, who succeeded longtime strength and condition coach Barry Rubin after his retirement last offseason.
• The percentage of players who feel like they have a comfortable amount of space during flights jumped from 59% to 83%. But the club remains one of seven teams requiring some players to have roommates the night before a game.

Tretter says the survey isn’t designed to shame teams but rather to highlight positive clubs, identify areas of improvement, and highlight best practices around the league.

“Progress rarely comes as fast as you would like, but we are encouraged by how many teams made substantial improvements in the wake of last year’s results,” Tretter wrote in a column accompanying the survey. “Overall, players responded to those changes positively, which is reflected in many of the grades for those clubs.”