Will the Patriots’ NFLPA report card be enough shame for the Krafts? – Boston Herald

INDIANAPOLIS — The NFLPA report cards are subjective, unscientific surveys about player working conditions with unclear measurements and categories that already shifted within a year’s time.

They are not gospel. They should not be read as gospel or consumed as absolute referendums on any team. But of course, when more than 1,700 players respond, good for an average of 53 players per franchise, they should also not be ignored.

And if the Patriots are listening, their grades are screaming one thing: start packing for summer school.

Two failing grades — for their weight room and treatment of player families — is embarrassment alone. But ranking fourth-worst overall in the league? Receiving worse grades in virtually every category compared to a year ago, including more than half where they ranked in the bottom 10?

For a first-class franchise? Under an ownership group that insists over and over again it has no spending limits? Seriously?

It’s time to pay up, or shut up.

It’s not enough the Patriots have already begun to modernize and move their weight room ahead of next season. It’s not enough they could fix their other “F” by simply adding a family room, an amenity offered by 28 other teams in the league. If the Patriots ever want to be the Patriots again, Robert Kraft must join Jerod Mayo and Eliot Wolf in the rebuild, crack open his wallet and finance his football operations back to the top.

Fix it. The lackluster travel and training staff, too. All of it. Champions act like champions before they are crowned. That starts with ownership.

The next time Kraft wants to remind us for the 1,834th time he was once a season ticket holder on the metal bleachers of Foxboro Stadium, he should consider the fans freezing in Gillette Stadium last December; how they paid the third-highest ticket prices in the league, while the offense fell to dust, the team floundered to its third losing record in four seasons and players looked around believing they would be better off lifting at a Planet Fitness.

Where else in entertainment — forget sports — could any command top dollar for a product like that?

Kraft, like all NFL owners, surely knows he has fans by the family jewels. Football is an American addiction. We will sacrifice almost anything at the altar of the NFL to experience the thrill of another two-minute drill or afternoon with RedZone.

NFL owners have never been richer, more comfortable or more powerful. And that is precisely why the report card exists.

Officially, the NFLPA created the report card last year to “highlight positive clubs, identify areas that could use improvement, and highlight best practices and standards.” Unofficially, it’s a flex to apply public pressure on the league’s most powerful people and affect labor change. The question now is: how much does Kraft care?

If Kraft feels stung, he might be comforted by the age-old wisdom and staple public relations advice: this too shall pass. The NFL will drown Wednesday’s report cards with Thursday’s news about quarterbacks, workouts, rumors and other hot air from the combine. All will be forgotten and forgiven.

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But if fans are lucky, that won’t be good enough for Kraft. Again, this was not a media poll, nor feedback from staffers or coaches. These were players. Players who aired out the team’s dirty, stinking laundry and pinned a picture of Kraft’s face on it while scribbling a big, red “D+” over his face.

Pause.

Sidebar No. 1: cries about millionaire players bemoaning work conditions in professional sports miss a couple of key facts: these players are the NFL’s labor and the product, meaning not only are they better at your job than you are and my job than I am, but they are exponentially more valuable. Relatedly, their compensation is artificially curbed by a salary cap billionaire owners installed to protect themselves from spending one another into competitive oblivion.

In an open market, NFL players would make far more than they do today. That unknowable figure is what they are worth, not their current salaries.

Sidebar No. 2 : Do not read this report card as some tired blame pie for the Patriots’ post-Brady problems split between Belichick versus Kraft. They were both complicit in the franchise’s downfall. More to the point, Belichick earned an identical ranking — 27th out of 32 head coaches — albeit with a kinder “B-” grade because players were kinder to their direct bosses than their boss’ boss. (Only three coaches received grades lower than a “B-,” whereas 11 owners did.)

Belichick is gone because he had complete control over the Patriots’ football operations during a four-year span when the team went 29-39. The Pats suffered from fractured coaching staffs, bad drafts, a broken quarterback and a draining culture.

No NFL head coach or GM survives a four-year span like that, let alone when those peoeple are one and the same. Belichick didn’t. The shame, pain, frustration failure were too much for the Krafts, who decided to move on two months before they actually did.

So what do they feel now? What will they do?

The report card, however imprecise and flawed, delivered a clear message about the state of the franchise from within the facility. Nothing could be more damning.

Will the Krafts listen?