Perks to Performance: An Analysis of NFL Team Report Cards

Michael King, Ph.D.,
Research Psychologist II

NFL organization report cards were released a couple months ago! For the past two years, the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) has surveyed active NFL players to assess various aspects of each NFL team’s organization. The purpose of this is to illuminate what the daily experience is like for players and their families on each team, to serve as a sort of “Free Agency Guide” for all players around the league (Tretter, 2024). In other words, players want to see what it’s like working for different organizations to help them decide where to work (and where to avoid). Luckily, these report cards are published for the public to see, and there were some interesting results.

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The categories that teams are graded on are: Treatment of Families, Food/Cafeteria, Nutritionist/Dietician, Locker Room, Training Room, Training Staff, Weight Room, Strength Coaches,  Team Travel, Head Coach, and Team Owner. Teams are graded on these categories using a classic ten-point grading scale. Overall grades are weighted using a weighting scale that weighs more heavily on the grades of the Team Owner and Head Coach and less on the Dietician and treatment of Families (interesting weighting choice). You can find the full report card of each team here: https://nflpa.com/nfl-player-team-report-cards-2024. 

Source: Butzengear on DeviantArt

As an NFL fan, I find these report cards fascinating. I want to know how my team’s grades stack up with other teams. But it got me wondering: do these grades matter in terms of performance? Does the quality of the cafeteria food drive performance on the field? How do organizational benefits and workplace quality impact wins and losses? I took my football fan cap off, put on my research psychologist cap, and got to work to investigate these questions. I transformed letter grades to the ten-point grading scale and ran correlational analyses between organizational grades and NFL regular season win totals. Here are some of my findings.
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• There is no statistical relationship between NFL regular season wins and average organization grade (r = 0.32, p = 0.07).
• A statistically significant relationship exists between NFL regular season wins and an organization’s treatment of players’ families (r = 0.36, p < 0.05).
• A statistically significant relationship exists between NFL regular season wins and the quality of an organization’s locker room (r = 0.37, p < 0.05). 

These results are compelling. Overall, it appears that organizational benefits really do not impact wins and losses. However, an organization’s treatment of players’ families and the locker room quality do have an impact. If teams take care of players’ families, it may take a load off the player’s minds during games. If a player is worried about their family getting harassed by fans, not having a place to watch the game in comfort, and having to find a daycare away from the stadium for their kids, they may not perform at as high of a level. If the locker room is small and crowded and players don’t have a place to relax or recuperate between halves and before games, they may not be able to mentally and physically prepare to perform at their best during the game.

Like a good data hygienist, I needed to explore the overall results a little more. When we plot out the comparison between organizations’ scores and their wins and losses, there is one particularly intriguing data point.

Source: Michael King, Ph.D

It turns out that the team with the lowest average organizational score (unweighted) also had a very high number of wins. This team is none other than the 2024 Super Bowl Champions, Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs received F ratings for their Nutritionist/Dietician, Locker Room, and Training Staff and a staggering F- for their Ownership. Ouch. Additionally, they received only a D+ for their treatment of families (look out, Taylor Swift).
The Super Bowl champion having the lowest overall rating seemed like a good reason to remove them from the analyses as an outlier. When we remove the Kansas City Chiefs from analyses, we find that there is a statistically significant relationship between NFL regular season wins and average organization grade (r = 0.41, p < 0.05), and the relationships strengthen between regular season wins and treatment of families (r = 0.38, p < 0.05) and locker room quality (r = 0.44, p < 0.05).
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It turns out that the quality of a workplace environment does impact team performance. However, this is among world-class athletes, who, for the most part, are getting paid millions of dollars every year. What does this relationship look like for other organizations? Over the past decade, we have seen a higher emphasis placed on glamourous workplace benefits, especially in the tech industry. Companies tout benefits ranging from professional chefs serving three meals daily, free laundry services, and even “pawternity leave” for new pet owners. But does this actually improve performance among their employees? Is the cost of providing glamorous benefits worth it for companies? Maybe companies should take a page out of the NFL’s book. Offer benefits that ensure employees’ families can be properly cared for and provide a functional work environment so employees can have physical and mental well-being in the office. The rest of it might just be fluff. That said, please, QIC, don’t take away my office snacks. 

References
​Tretter, J. (2024, February 28). NFL team report cards 2024: For the players, by the players. NFL Players Association. https://nflpa.com/posts/nfl-team-report-cards-2024-for-the-players-by-the-players