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Robert Kraft responds to ‘eye-opening’ NFLPA report card criticism from players
The Patriots scored worse than every team in the league except for Arizona.
The Patriots’ grades in the NFLPA’s annual report card were awful this year.
Each year players are anonymously polled by the players’ association on a variety of subjects that have to do with working conditions, including topics such as food, treatment of families, team travel, and training facilities.
The Patriots scored second-to-last among the NFL’s 32 teams in this year’s survey. Two areas that stuck out as major problems were team travel and the weight room. Players gave the Patriots “F” grades in both. During this week’s NFL Annual meetings, Kraft addressed the poor marks with reporters.
“It was an eye-opener for me and then I put it in context,” Kraft said. “Going through these last two years and the way things were and the culture was there, it really opened my eyes in a way because we think we’re bonding and we have things, but it just was not a good environment. And we want to do everything we can to make this – you’re feeling this is one of the best places you can go.”
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“I think we had that for quite a while in terms of winning and people wanting to come here,” he added. “The last couple of years changed it. Now it’s management and ownership’s job to do everything they can to create the culture that this is a place people want to come to.”
Some of the criticism about the way the Patriots travel included the team plane being too small, not having Wi-Fi, and having ashtrays in the armrests – a relic of a bygone era.
Kraft said the plane did not have ashtrays in it, but admitted that the Patriots are due for an upgrade.
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“We bought those planes to make it easier for our team to travel. It was very hard pre-Covid to get planes,” he said. “And we’re in the process of trying to update and improve that.
“We want everything we do to be top-of-the-heap and first-class,” he continued. “Rather than wanting to go out and charter and everything we wanted the control. We’ve let the planes be used by different charities and they’ve done a lot of good, but we do need an upgrade.”
Players also criticized the Patriots for having a small weight room with below average equipment. The weight room was ranked dead last in the league for the second year in a row. It was 31st out of 32 teams in 2023.
The Patriots announced last December that they are building a new, standalone, three-story football training facility. The team said it is aiming to have the new building finished by spring 2026.
“As teams and team operations have grown, it was time for us to design a larger facility exclusively for the operation of the football team,” Kraft Sports and Entertainment Chief Operating Officer Jim Nolan said at the time. “The main floor is designed for where the players will work out, train, rehab, relax, and eat. The top floor is designed for where players and coaches will watch game film, strategize and meet.”
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Only the Arizona Cardinals fared worse than the Patriots in the 2025 report card survey. The Patriots got a “D” in ownership. Their highest grade, a “B+”, was for head coach Jerod Mayo, whom they fired. New England scored “C+” or worse in eight of the 11 categories.
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