The Commanders Culture Is Damn Good

WJFK-FM / 106.7 The Fan

The NFLPA conducted their report card, and this time around it reflects the work of Josh Harris, Adam Peters, and Dan Quinn.

Transcript

00:00The other big development NFL news wise today, Danny, the NFL PA survey dropped.

00:05So this is year three of this NFL PA survey, and this is normally a dreaded day

00:12around these parts. The last two years, Washington has graded 32nd of 32 teams

00:21in the NFL PA team report cards. So the way this works for those of you that don't remember,

00:27there are right around 10 categories that players are pulled on secret ballot style,

00:34where they get to grade their employer. You might do this in your own workplace, by the way.

00:38Absolutely. We get a little email like this, where it's like, what's good? What is it about

00:42working where you work? And so the NFL PA, the union for the players, then compiles all of the

00:49grading from every single player. It's like a one to 10 scale. They grade based on the numbers,

00:54letter grades for every team in every category. And then they assign one to 32, the overall

01:00report card. And for lack of a better phrase, I just say the best to the worst team to work for.

01:06These are things like, how do you treat the family of the players, food and dining area?

01:11Does it taste good? Is it fresh? And do I have a nice cafeteria to eat in? Nutritionist,

01:15dietician. Do I have someone coaching me up? Well, the locker room, which a lot of the teams

01:21with the dated and antiquated facilities like Washington get a really bad grade in that

01:26training room, training staff, the weight room, strength coaches, team travel.

01:30What kind of plane are we flying on? Do we have enough space? Is our schedule when we travel

01:34efficient? Am I having to sleep in the same room as someone in a hotel like the Dallas Cowboys

01:40make their players do the night before a game, which is comical and then head coach and ownership.

01:45And that's my favorite categories when being honest, because it's just like

01:49secret. How much do you like your boss? Which coaches are popular, which are not,

01:53which owners are popular, which are hated. Well, Danny, after two years of being dead last 32 out

02:01of 32 based on players, not liking working for the commanders. And before that the football team

02:10this year, they ranked 11th, just outside of the top 10. What a turnaround.

02:16You're pretty clear. The turnaround is there and it's obvious they're limited mainly by the

02:21facilities, right? Outdated. You can do as much lipstick as you want on nubs field to dash burn.

02:29It's not a good setup. So I don't think you can get much harder than that, to be honest with you.

02:33What you can do is everything else. You can be first class in everything from training staff,

02:39strength and conditioning treatment of families, whether it's travel, just doing everything

02:45possible to be kind and to be thoughtful and be generous and not worry about how much something

02:51costs. You just do the right thing and know that it'll come back to you in the end.

02:54Know that it'll come out in the wash. I mean, we heard these stories. I don't know if this is

02:57unique to the NFL or, you know, to this team rather than other places. I have no idea. I've

03:02never experienced it though. A guy gets hurt and Adam Peters immediately, you know, goes down to

03:08the locker room where the family member or somebody else can't go. And he's texting the

03:12spouse. He's texting the dad who he knew happened to be in the stadium at that point. Or he's texting,

03:17you know, somebody's younger brother who was there. Hey, this is what's going on. We're taking

03:22him to the emergency room or not a big deal. It's a sprained ankle. He'll be back in a couple of

03:26weeks, whatever that is. That's first class, man. It just is. That is the understanding that somebody

03:32is going through it, understanding that there's anxiety from loved ones and you're doing everything

03:36you possibly can. That's above and beyond. Now, it may not seem like that big a deal,

03:40but you do that in all walks all the time. Yeah. It's better because some skeptics going to tell

03:45you it's because they want a bunch of games. Yeah. That helps. It's not worth 21 spots though.

03:50A lot of teams that want a bunch of games didn't necessarily do that.

03:53Well, they're just controlling the controllables. The things that they can actually positively

03:58change and affect and influence without having a new stadium and a new facility, all we're on a

04:05rocket ship toward not just better grades, but A's and a pluses. Uh, they have the highest

04:11rated head coach in Dan Quinn, according to player polling this year, one out of 32,

04:18in terms of the score that was given to Dan Quinn by his players, they have a top 10 owner.

04:22Now in terms of popularity among players, they got an A grade there. Josh Harris,

04:26eight out of 32 owners. They got an A for team travel. They got an A for their strength coaches.

04:33Again, this is just player graded, right? A lot of these guys, and especially this year,

04:37two dozen of their players came from outside the building. They've been in other buildings.

04:41They've been at other stops. They came here and we're so impressed this year by how Washington

04:46was doing it. It's not like you're a career, uh, commander who's been here four years.

04:50And just the improvement year over year was so big. Oh, these are guys like Wagner has been with

04:54the Rams and the Seahawks or, uh, Austin Eckler has been with the chargers who came here and said,

04:59I really, really liked this B plus for the training staff B plus for the food and dining.

05:05After they got F grades in that category over the last couple of years, B plus for how they

05:10treated families, a B minus for their weight room. Now you said it a lot of the issue that they have

05:17is just going to be facilities. C plus in the training room for basically where they get their

05:23work done. And then an F in the locker room, because the guy said they don't have enough

05:26space. It's not nice enough, whatever until you get your new stadium. And that also means you're

05:32going to get your new training facility, wherever that is. There's only so much you can do there.

05:37Maybe you could put some blush on that pig, but for the most part, Danny, you're, you're basically

05:43looking at what a D hopefully a C minus grade, but to go from 32 to 11, I still remember the quote

05:51at the end of last season. I think it was when Josh Harris did a press conference and he was

05:55asked about the NFL PA scores that came out. And he said, I'm not an F minus guy.

06:03We're not going to do F minus work. We won't stand for that. Well, he put his money where his mouth

06:08is. We saw it literally with the stadium, 70 million bucks. And you're seeing it in this

06:12polling with the stuff that we don't get to see that the players get to see. But I think a big

06:16part of this is Adam Peters, who's just a human being with human skills and high EQ and treats

06:21people really well, who sets the front office culture. I think a huge part of this is Dan Quinn,

06:26same thing. You have good human being with good people to people skills. They had some of that,

06:32like Ron Rivera was a beloved guy and a liked coach. I think it would be remiss if we didn't

06:37suggest that some of this was the fact that they want a bunch of games and it was a lot more fun

06:40to come to work when you're winning 14 games instead of four the previous season, but there

06:45is a chicken or the egg. We'll debate later in the show, you know, conversation to be had here

06:50where the 14 wins were made possible by guys wanting to be in the building for longer than

06:54they wanted to be there last year. But look at some of the big differences. Treatment of families

06:58last year, F minus this year, F plus food and dining last year was up from an F to a D plus

07:04this year, B plus. Let's see where some of the other biggest training staff went from an F to

07:11a B plus an area where they invested a lot of time and money. Team travel went from an F to an A.

07:16I bet you go from an F to an A in a year. You try, you work at it, you spend, you ask a lot

07:21of questions. Harrison rails and these owners sit down with players and ask them, what do you need?

07:27Head coach Rivera went C to Quinn, a plus ownership. You're one of the ownership group of B.

07:33They listened, they made changes. Now they're in a almost unilaterally across the board.

07:38Everything went up. And there's, listen, there's no guarantee. Like if you finish one or two in

07:42this doesn't mean that you're winning 15 games. And you know, there are gripes with every

07:45organization. I like the bills, for example, have been a buzzsaw had been as good as anybody

07:49in the sport. I think had like an F when it came to travel on F minus, or, you know, you look at

07:53some of the different, different things. Some of it isn't necessarily a guarantee one way or the

07:57other. You can, you can have strengths and weaknesses. I mean, Atlanta finished really

08:00high and they've been the definition of mediocre. So it's not always one-to-one, but the point is

08:05you've gone from this old way of doing it previously, where for everybody used to defend

08:12Snyder or say, well, he wants to win or, or, or whatever. You had a funny way of showing it.

08:16You can do the prize that everybody gets to see the unsexy thing, the, the winning thing,

08:22the good behavior thing, which is you treat people. Well, every once in a while, you may stumble into

08:27that. They never could find a way to do so. Whether it was, you know, training table, whether

08:32it was, you know, food, whether it was the facility. I mean, again, can you imagine how

08:37embarrassed you would be? I'm talking to you, Grant, and then you, everyone else out there

08:40listening. If part of your NFL facility, guys had to walk around an unusable turf field that

08:46had basically been condemned. Basically like it's not safe to have people on this field as part of

08:51an NFL practice facility. You can't go on it because it'll, it'll, you know, it's like going

08:56on the concrete at veteran stadium after a million years of a wear and tear. You just dealt with that

09:02not for a minute, not for six months when we're saving some money for decades, you couldn't use

09:07that thing. It took Harris an hour. I go, what? We can't use that. Be bull crap. We're fixing that

09:12right now. That's just, that's just what you do. The whole business is supposed to be about winning

09:16football games and treating people. Well, it comes back to you and I'm proud of him. Honestly,

09:21that's awesome. So this was pulling of the players. I want to reiterate NFLPA did this,

09:26and these are the things that they saw that mattered to them

09:29that made their experience better with the commanders.

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