NFL owners rarely generate the headlines that their coaches, quarterbacks and players do — well, outside of a certain Dallas owner who never met a microphone he didn’t love. But if you believe in the maxim that organizations are only as strong as the people at the top, then the owner might be the most important person in any NFL building. They certainly impact the on-field product considerably, whether good or bad. 

What makes a good owner? Ultimately they’re the one making all of the important hiring decisions. They set the vision that the general manager, head coach and other leadership team members are tasked with enacting, and they’re responsible for providing the resources they need to do their jobs. Most execs and coaches will say an owner ideally won’t meddle in football operations, but the best owners understand there’s a time and a place to put their finger on the scale. 

With that in mind, here’s a look at all 32 ownership situations and how they stack up around the NFL. Brand-new Seahawks owners Vinod Khosla and Neeru Khosla will be exempted for now, as they just agreed to purchase the team and haven’t had a chance to put their stamp on the franchise yet. 

1 – Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie

Philadelphia has been one of the most successful franchises in football for decades. The Eagles got their first Super Bowl in team history in 2017 and have been back to the big game two more times in the ensuing years, adding another Lombardi in 2024. Obviously that’s all a team effort, but it speaks to how well Lurie has performed in his capacity. 

There are a few things that set Lurie apart from other owners. He has been excellent with his hiring decisions, landing on Andy Reid, Doug Pederson, Nick Sirianni as head coaches and, of course, GM Howie Roseman. Crucially, he has done a good job of understanding when it’s time to transition, as even the best coaches can go stale after too long in the same place, as happened with Reid and Pederson. 

Lurie also is a big reason Roseman and the Eagles can operate the way they do. He’s willing to spend the upfront cash that lets Roseman kick cap hits way down the road, and he embraced Philadelphia’s lean into analytics in all parts of how the team is run. The Eagles probably have the best GM and front office in football, and it’s in no small part due to Lurie. 

2 – Patriots owner Robert Kraft

I find Kraft’s personal lobbying for a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame cringe-worthy, but that’s more of a stance against owners being included in the Hall, as they get plenty of recognition and there’s a backlog for other contributors. As an owner, he does stand out from most of his peers as a part of New England’s 20-year dynasty and deserves credit for the role he played. 

I was also impressed by how Kraft has handled the transition period with both HC Bill Belichick and QB Tom Brady gone. There were some lean years, and Kraft’s hand-picked successor to Belichick, Jerod Mayo, was not good in his lone season. Rather than double-down and attach his ego to Mayo’s success, Kraft recognized an opportunity to upgrade with a proven commodity in HC Mike Vrabel. That switch paid off instantly as the Patriots were back in the Super Bowl in Vrabel’s first year. 

3 – Broncos owner Greg Penner

Penner is the son-in-law of Rob Walton, the Walmart heir and super billionaire owner of the Broncos as of 2022. He was tabbed by Walton as team president and the primary face of ownership for Denver in the building and at league meetings. While this puts the family as one of the newest faces to the fraternity of owners, they’ve made an outstanding first impression, taking over the team at a low point with the failed Russell Wilson trade and flop by one-and-done HC Nathaniel Hackett. 

Their response was to go all-in and trade for HC Sean Payton from the Saints, who still owned his rights after he retired for a broadcasting hiatus in 2022. Payton’s track record was one of the best in the league but it still required the Broncos to give up a ton, not just draft picks but salary and a commitment for operating costs. One of the many takeaways from ESPN writer Seth Wickersham’s terrific piece where he embedded with Payton and the Broncos during the playoffs was Payton ordering oxygen tanks for the entire team to hammer home his motivational message. Ownership is the one paying for that and probably tons of other examples. 

Not every owner would have been willing to do that, and that’s where Walton-Penner really set themselves apart. They have exponentially deeper pockets than any other ownership group in the league and are willing to spend it. The Broncos’ brand-new $175 million practice facility is proof of that and they’re working on a brand-new facility that will be heavily financed by private money. Apart from cutting the checks, they stay out of Payton’s way and let him do his thing, which has been successful so far. 

4 – Rams owner Stan Kroenke

As owner of the Los Angeles Rams, Kroenke has done well. He made a key decision to retain GM Les Snead at the beginning of his tenure despite some tough results, then pulled the trigger on a brilliant hire of HC Sean McVay. Those two men have fueled a terrific run by the Rams since 2017 that includes two Super Bowl appearances and a Lombardi trophy. 

With Snead and McVay, Kroenke can be hands off with the football operations and just sign the checks for what is needed, whether it’s big trades or restructures. The Rams also run their football operations department differently than the other 32 teams, and Kroenke has been willing to go out on that limb with them. 

5 – Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti

Under Bisciotti, Baltimore has been one of the steadiest and well-run teams in the league. The Ravens have excelled at development, whether it’s creating a pipeline in the front office and coaching staff or the next man up on the roster. They have both evolved as the league has changed while still maintaining a consistent identity that spans decades — an impressive balancing act. Bisciotti has also aced his hiring calls, going out on a limb to hire former HC John Harbaugh, a lightly regarded special teams coach at the time, to replace a Super Bowl-winning HC Brian Billick. Time will tell if he caught lightning in a bottle again after moving on from Harbaugh following 18 years this past winter. 

6 – Chiefs owner Clark Hunt

Kansas City has been the latest NFL dynasty with a remarkable run in QB Patrick Mahomes’ first seven years as a starter. Last year was a setback and we’ll see what the future holds, but before then the Chiefs had won three Super Bowls, appeared in two others and been to seven straight AFC title games. 

Hunt’s been the owner that whole time but his greatest contribution is actually before this all started. He took over for his father, Lamar Hunt, who the AFC championship trophy is named after, and there were some early bumps as he found his footing. But Clark Hunt struck gold by hiring Reid after he was let go by the Eagles, then made another bold move four years later by letting go of GM John Dorsey — a longtime NFL personnel veteran who was widely respected and had helped the Chiefs reach the playoffs three times in four years. Hunt saw problems festering behind the scenes and decided to be proactive, tabbing exec Brett Veach as GM. Veach helped push for the trade up for Mahomes, and the rest is history. 

One criticism of the Chiefs is that even though the Hunts are in the top five in net worth among NFL owners, they’re stricter with their operating costs than some other teams. Still, it’s hard to argue with the results of the last decade. 

7 – Packers president Ed Policy

Green Bay is in the unique position of being the only publicly-owned NFL team, but the team president is their representative at NFL owners meetings and carries out the same functions. They’re just responsible to a board and not solely to themselves. Policy took over for Mark Murphy last year, who had reached the end of his term limit (another uniquely Green Bay feature). So he hasn’t been long in the role but as the team’s general counsel since 2012, he’s been a part of the building for a long time. 

There are some unique challenges to owning a team in a place like Green Bay. The Packers are one of the league’s most established brands, however, and they have been consistently well-run for a long time. Stability has been a part of that, and Policy continued that trend by extending both GM Brian Gutekunst and HC Matt LaFleur this offseason. It’s his first major decision on the job and we’ll see how it shakes out. 

8 – 49ers owner Jed York

There were some rocky moments early on in York’s tenure after becoming the principal owner, namely the rift between GM Trent Baalke and former HC Jim Harbaugh that led to the coach’s ouster. York learned from that ugly power struggle, though, and hit a home run with the pairing of HC Kyle Shanahan and GM John Lynch in 2017. Since then, the 49ers have reached four NFC title games and two Super Bowls, though they’ve had the misfortune of coming up short to the Chiefs both times. 

York is one of a few examples of how it is possible for owners to improve with time, even though they don’t have the same pressure on their jobs as coaches, GMs and players who get much shorter leashes. 

9 – Lions owner Sheila Ford Hamp

Hamp has not been in her role all that long, taking over for her mother, Martha Firestone Ford, in 2020 after she inherited the team from her husband, William Clay Ford, following his passing in 2014. At that time, the Lions were one of the least successful franchises in the league. They were mired in a playoff victory drought that stretched back to 1991 and had made the playoffs just three times since 2000. Hamp’s first move was to fire GM Bob Quinn and HC Matt Patricia, and she didn’t exactly have her pick of the market to find replacements for jobs that, despite being 1 of 32, weren’t seen as that appealing. 

It’s safe to say the hires of HC Dan Campbell and GM Brad Holmes have wildly exceeded expectations. It took time to build the program and Hamp had to give a midseason press conference in their second year backing Campbell and Holmes after a 1-7 start that has now become famous. Her patience was rewarded with an 8-1 finish and the Lions have now had four straight winning seasons, reaching the playoffs twice and the NFC Championship in 2023. Hamp gets points for not only her hires, but sticking with them and empowering them to build a program that should be able to have sustainable success. Considering where the Lions were for the previous 60 years, this rank is well-deserved even if it’s only been five years. 

10 – Steelers owner Art Rooney II

One of the NFL’s legacy franchises, the Steelers are tied with the Patriots for most Super Bowls at six. They’ve historically been one of the league’s most successful and stable franchises year in and year out under the stewardship of the Rooney family. Their last losing season was 2003. New HC Mike McCarthy is just the fourth coach Pittsburgh has had since 1968, joining Mike Tomlin, Bill Cowher and Chuck Noll. 

The elephant in the room, of course, is that the Steelers haven’t won a playoff game since 2017. With that stability comes some element of being old school, though the Steelers have done a lot to modernize over the past few years since shifting from longtime GM Kevin Colbert to new GM Omar Khan. Still, they remain an incredibly high-floor organization, and it says something that the fanbase isn’t satisfied with just making the playoffs five out of the past six seasons. 

Tier Break

As I was building this list, there was a pretty clear dropoff for me after the top 10 that I thought was worth noting. The next 10 or so owners are all grouped pretty tightly, either from being new faces without an extensive body of work or by not standing out in a major way, either positive or negative. 

11 – Commanders owner Josh Harris

2020 was a weird time in history. Whatever you think about that year, one positive event everyone can agree on is that 202 was the beginning of the end for former Washington owner Dan Snyder. Mounting controversies finally forced him to sell the team a few years later in 2023 to a group spearheaded by Harris, the Philadelphia 76ers owner. No other owner has been so beloved before he even arrived just because he wasn’t Snyder. 

So far, Harris has done well. He hired GM Adam Peters who hired HC Dan Quinn and drafted QB Jayden Daniels in 2024. That trio sparked a surprise run to the NFC Championship. Things weren’t as charmed last year, so we’ll see what the future holds. Regardless, the bar was so low that Harris has already cleared it by miles. 

12 – Bills owner Terry Pegula

Pegula bought the Bills in 2014 following the death of longtime former owner Ralph Wilson. It didn’t take long for him to land on a winning GM/HC combination, hiring Brandon Beane and Sean McDermott both in 2017. Those two went on to lead the Bills to as much team success as they’ve had since reaching four straight Super Bowls in the 1990s. 

Failing to break through past the AFC title game despite having QB Josh Allen is why McDermott was cut loose after nine seasons. Pegula put his foot in his mouth defending his decision to stick with Beane when he was just as much a part of the past nine years as McDermott, but other than that, his record is pretty strong and includes a new stadium to ensure the team remains in Buffalo. The next several years will go a long way toward determining Pegula’s legacy as they chase a Super Bowl, just like they will for plenty of other people in Buffalo. 

13 – Buccaneers owners Joel Glazer, Bryan Glazer and Edward Glazer

There’s a saying that the only thing better than being rich and famous is being rich. The Glazers can’t remain anonymous with their sports portfolio that also includes soccer club Manchester United. But they do their best to fly under the radar, rarely speaking to reporters, not even team-employed media. 

Their record overall is mixed but there’s probably more good than bad. The Buccaneers have won two Super Bowls since the Glazers bought the team in 1995. In between those two was a 12-year playoff drought. They were patient with GM Jason Licht and allowed him to find his stride, which they were rewarded by when they landed Brady in his departure from New England. They don’t sign Brady and win a Super Bowl without Licht, and he’s helped the team transition smoothly into the post-Brady era, too. 

With Brady, the Buccaneers departed from their usual conservative money management strategy to try to stack the roster. After he retired, they reverted back to being a lot more budget-conscious, which is prominently in the headlines right now. They lost WR Mike Evans in free agency and have two high-profile players in QB Baker Mayfield and DT Vita Vea who are unhappy with their contracts right now. 

14 – Vikings owners Zygi Wilf and Mark Wilf

The Wilfs took over the Vikings in 2005 and recently crossed the 20-year milestone for their tenure. They have invested quite a bit into the team, including a sparkling new stadium that opened in 2016 and is still the envy of much of the league. They’re among the most even-keeled owners in football and have a track record of giving their football personnel lots of patience. Every head coach or GM they’ve hired has gotten at least four years. 

The actual results on the field have not been as stellar. The Wilfs’ mandate for their football leadership is to try to put the most competitive product on the field possible. They want to win, which is admirable. Minnesota is usually at least average and has only bottomed out a couple of times. 

The unintended side effect of that, however, is that it has made it harder for the Vikings to find a long-term solution at the quarterback position. That is one of the biggest things that has held the franchise back the last couple of decades. The closest the Vikings have come is probably Kirk Cousins and there were always doubts about his ceiling as a franchise starter, which ultimately was why Minnesota moved on. They’re still trying to find that quarterback who can take them to a Super Bowl with a high-profile quarterback competition between Kyler Murray and J.J. McCarthy this year. 

15 – Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon

Legendary former Colts owner Jim Irsay passed away before last season, but there was no leadership void. His daughter had been training for years to take over for him, embedding herself deep in the football operations to obtain more granular knowledge about how a football team works than most owners ever get. She went viral last season for wearing a coaching headset on the sideline — something she’d been doing for years but regular fans just finally cared who she was. 

Irsay-Gordon had only one real year to make a mark, but already she’s charting a slightly different course than her father, who had a reputation as being emotional and impulsive. She elected to give GM Chris Ballard and HC Shane Steichen another year despite a late-season collapse that left both on the hot seat. Either that will prove prudent or she’ll be executing a clean sweep in the football operations department. 

16 – Saints owner Gayle Benson

Benson has some stellar attributes as an NFL owner, which is why she was able to retain Payton for so long despite plenty of other sharks circling to try and pry him away over the years. As far as resourcing goes, the Saints have never had issues under her leadership. They pioneered an aggressive salary cap strategy that leaned on restructures to maximize available cap space in any given year. That requires an owner who’s willing to spend more cash right now and take on higher operating costs, and Benson was up for it. Not many owners are. 

She’s incredibly loyal to her staff as well, which is a perk from their perspective. From the perspective of the fans and the media, there’s a case to be made she’s stuck with GM Mickey Loomis too long and the Saints have failed to update their strategy to rebuild in the post-Payton and QB Drew Brees era. Then again, last year was a promising start with new HC Kellen Moore and QB Tyler Shough. 

17 – Giants owner John Mara

Mara is one of a dwindling number of legacy NFL owners whose families have owned teams since the birth of the NFL. The Giants were one of the models for other organizations for a long period of time, and under Mara they’ve won two of their four Super Bowls. 

They’ve fallen on hard times, though. Like many inheriting a family business, Mara was slow to modernize and the Giants only recently have caught up to the rest of the NFL in certain areas with the business and front office. He inherited former HC Tom Coughlin as well, and his own hiring decisions have been far more fraught. Since 2016, he’s hired five different head coaches, and three of them made it only two years. The hope is that former Ravens HC John Harbaugh is the missing piece to help the Giants get back to respectability. 

18 – Falcons owner Arthur Blank

People involved with the Falcons have regularly spoken well of how great Blank is to work for. Historically, he’s had a fairly long leash and hasn’t meddled with his football people. There have been no real concerns about resourcing, either, and the Falcons have strong facilities. 

The on-field results haven’t been as strong. The start of Blank’s ownership coincided with the start of the NFC South after realignment in 2002. Since then, the Falcons have won the division just four times. They have eight playoff appearances, three trips to the NFC Championship and a Super Bowl berth, but that was the infamous “28-3” game when they collapsed to the Patriots. Atlanta’s currently on an eight-year playoff drought. 

As far as hiring goes, Blank has been decent but not exceptional. His patience has started to wane as he gets older, too. Mike Smith got seven years, Dan Quinn got five and a half, Arthur Smith got three and Raheem Morris got two, with Blank executing a clean sweep with former GM Terry Fontenot too. He didn’t go for a proven commodity, either, tabbing former QB Matt Ryan to be his football president despite no football experience, forming a leadership troika with HC Kevin Stefanski and GM Ian Cunningham. We’ll see how it goes.  

19 – Cowboys owner Jerry Jones

Easily the most controversial owner on this list. Jones flouts the conventional wisdom that an owner shouldn’t meddle in football affairs. He’s had the general manager title since he bought the team in 1989. When he had HC Jimmy Johnson, that worked out to the tune of three Super Bowls. Since the last one in 1995, though, the Cowboys haven’t so much as sniffed an NFC title game. 

That and Jones’ love of embracing controversy — he subscribes to the school of thought that there’s no such thing as bad publicity — have made him a popular punching bag in Dallas and the NFL world as a whole. Jones has also been his own worst enemy sometimes. You can draw a straight line from the collapse of the relationship with Micah Parsons during contract talks last summer, which led to his trade to the Packers, and Dallas finishing with one of the league’s worst defenses, missing the playoffs despite having the No. 2 offense in football. Jones has cost himself money by dragging his feet on high-profile deals for QB Dak Prescott and WR CeeDee Lamb, too. 

That said, the Cowboys have quietly been one of the stronger front offices in football the last several years when it comes to talent acquisition. They’ve had some really strong seasons and are eighth in the NFL in wins over the past decade. Cowboys EVP Will McClay deserves some laurels as the top executive under Jones, but you can’t just say everything bad the last 10 years is Jerry and everything good is his underlings. Jones has ownership over all of it, bad and good. 

20 – Chargers owner Dean Spanos

At one point, Spanos had a reputation for being cheap as an owner. With the team’s move to Los Angeles, there aren’t really any cash flow issues. They have a new stadium that they share with the Rams, a new practice facility, have regularly ranked toward the top of the league in cash spending and splurged big to get HC Jim Harbaugh from the college ranks. Spanos is also less involved in the day-to-day than he used to be, with his sons the primary point people running the football and business sides. 

Success has been harder to come by. The Chargers have one playoff win since 2014 despite seamlessly transitioning from Philip Rivers to Justin Herbert at quarterback. Harbaugh is the fourth different coach in that timeframe to try his hand at breaking through, and Los Angeles has made the postseason in both of his seasons in charge. They’re still searching for Herbert’s first career playoff win, though. 

21 – Texans owner Cal McNair

Owner of the NFL’s newest franchise, McNair became the primary owner in 2018 after his father Bob McNair passed. He did not make a good first impression and the early years of his charge were marked by turmoil and power struggles with former HC Bill O’Brien and EVP Jack Easterby seemingly at the center. The Texans went through three head coaches in three years at one point with two one-and-dones in David Culley and Lovie Smith. There were high-profile breakups with star players, too, including DeAndre Hopkins, Jadeveon Clowney and eventually Deshaun Watson, who had a sordid sexual harassment saga complicating things before he was traded. 

McNair was finally able to settle things down with the hires of GM Nick Caserio and HC DeMeco Ryans. The jury might still be out on Caserio in some ways but he works well with Ryans, and there’s a lot to like about Ryans. He’s created one of the best defenses in the NFL and as a former player is a terrific motivator and leader. McNair seems to have learned some tough lessons, and things are looking up again in Houston. 

22 – Bengals owner Mike Brown

Brown’s daughter, Bengals EVP Katie Blackburn, deserves mention here, too, as she’s taken on a lot more of the load running the team. Brown will celebrate his 91st birthday next week. She’s more modern in some ways but both are cut from the same cloth and the Bengals still stick to a lot of the ways they’ve done business forever. They don’t do guaranteed money past the first year of a deal except for rare exceptions. They rarely do trades and have the smallest front office in the league with a roster of scouts and executives in the single digits. Brown is patient and loyal with his coaches and general managers, too, often to a fault. 

That earns them plenty of criticism, especially going on a three-year playoff drought despite having QB Joe Burrow under center. The Bengals reached the Super Bowl after the 2021 season, made it back to the AFC title game the following year, then haven’t been back. Still, it’s flown under the radar how high the floor in Cincinnati has been under Brown. Even before Burrow arrived, Cincinnati had a streak of five straight playoff appearances in the mid-2000s. That’s worth something, even if it took Burrow arriving to snap a playoff victory drought that stretched from 1990 to 2021. 

Brown reminds me of noted financial advisor Dave Ramsey. You are extremely unlikely to screw up your life following Ramsey’s advice. You also won’t necessarily optimize all of the tools available to you to create wealth. Brown’s principles as an owner are rooted in solid football philosophy and give his team a high floor. They also might not be the best approach to optimizing the gift the Bengals have been given with a quarterback like Burrow. 

23 – Bears owner George McCaskey

McCaskey inherited one of the great NFL franchises from his mother, Virginia Halas McCaskey, and the team has been owned by the same family since its inception. Generally speaking, the McCaskeys have been hands-off, especially George. Since he’s moved into the primary role, he’s leaned hard on team presidents like Ted Phillips and Kevin Warren. 

Because the bulk of their wealth comes from the valuation of the Bears, the McCaskeys had stretches where they were more cash-poor than other owners with independent reserves from outside business ventures to tap into. As the NFL has boomed, that’s become less of a problem for the Bears but they had to catch up with facilities and other resources. A new stadium has also been a consistent problem, one Warren hasn’t been able to solve. 

As far as hiring, McCaskey’s record is not great. He cycled through Marc Trestman, John Fox, Matt Nagy and Matt Eberflus before finally seeming to strike gold with Ben Johnson this past year. 

24 – Jaguars owner Shad Khan

Khan is a great example of an owner who means well, but has a hard time translating their success in business to success in football. They don’t know what they need to look for when making important hires. Khan might have one of the worst hiring records of any owner. It’s not just that his choices have failed to bring consistent playoff success to Jacksonville; it’s that they have flamed out, often spectacularly. To quickly recap: 

• His first hire in 2012 was Mike Mularkey, who was one-and-done with a 2-14 record. 
• Khan then tabbed Gus Bradley who somehow won just 14 games in four years. 
• His next choice after Bradley was promoting interim HC Doug Marrone. Outside of a surprising 2017 run to the AFC title game with Blake Bortles, Marrone struggled, culminating in a 1-15 season in 2020. 
• Khan’s hire of former Ohio State and Florida coach Urban Meyer might go down as one of the most disastrous in NFL history, not just for how overmatched Meyer was at the NFL level, but for the barrage of negative headlines Meyer generated off the field, from canoodling with a young woman who wasn’t his wife in a bar in Columbus after a road game to allegedly kicking K Josh Lambo at practice. 

Even a hire that looked good initially in former Eagles Super Bowl-winning HC Doug Pederson turned sour. And Khan almost bungled his shot at current Jaguars HC Liam Coen because of misguided loyalty to former GM Trent Baalke, infamous for his office politics in both San Francisco and Jacksonville. The initial read is that Khan finally has the right people in place after a 13-4 debut from Coen and GM James Gladstone, and if that’s the case, he can be a quality supporting owner. All it took was more than a decade of throwing stuff against the wall. 

25 – Panthers owner Dave Tepper

Tepper is part of the new money crowd of NFL owners. He made his fortune as a hedge fund manager and was a minority owner of the Steelers before buying the Panthers when former owner Jerry Richardson sold the team amidst a personal scandal. Tepper’s one of the richest owners in football and got in when the price for a franchise was “only” $2.275 billion in 2018. 

He talked a big game but the early years were rough. His expertise in portfolio management did not translate to running a football team and the Panthers made a couple of painful hires in Matt Rhule and Frank Reich. Worse, it felt like they changed their long-term plan every offseason as Tepper got impatient and applied pressure on his football leadership. Tepper stepped on some rakes off the field, too, ranging from a misguided initial move to remove the “Keep Pounding” slogan from the team video boards, an abandoned practice facility/multi-use district in Rock Hill, South Carolina, conflict with the fans and an incident where he threw a drink on an opposing fan in a road loss to the Jaguars. 

That said, Tepper has inched up this list because he’s seemingly learned from those early mistakes. He has a head coach/GM combo with Dave Canales and Dan Morgan that seems to be rowing in the same direction and undoing the years of mismanagement. Tepper has made it a point to be seen and heard less outside of his philanthropic efforts in Charlotte, most notably the benefit concert following Hurricane Helene. Maybe most importantly, the Panthers snapped a seven-year drought and made the playoffs for the first time in Tepper’s tenure last year. 

26 – Dolphins owner Stephen Ross

When Ross took over the Dolphins in 2009, Miami was already struggling to find its way in the post-Dan Marino era. Ross’ ownership has not done a whole lot better in terms of on-field success. The Dolphins have made the playoffs just three times and currently own the longest active playoff victory drought in football at 25 years. Ross’ personnel decisions merit plenty of blame. The most successful coach he hired was Mike McDaniel, who was just fired, and he had a few other underwhelming GM hires before giving departed GM Chris Grier entirely too much time. There was also an embarrassing tampering scandal when he went after Payton and Brady. On the business side of things, though, Ross has been pretty strong. 

27 – Browns owner Jimmy Haslam

There are a few different archetypes different owners fall into. Haslam typifies The Waffler — an owner whose decision-making is swayed by the most influential person he talked to last. Those types of owners struggle to build consistent programs because they’re always casting about looking for the next best thing. They try to copy successful teams without truly understanding what it is that drives their success. 

The Browns were struggling before Haslam took over in 2012 but they reached new lows for NFL futility in the years since then. Haslam went through four different head coaches and four different GMs before settling on both HC Kevin Stefanski and GM Andrew Berry in 2020. That ushered in some relative stability, with Stefanski snapping a 17-year playoff drought and making a second playoff appearance in 2023 despite injuries riddling the team. 

But a disastrous trade and fully-guaranteed contract for Watson derailed the franchise again. Haslam fired Stefanski but kept on Berry, who’s chipping away at trying to rebuild the roster again after being responsible, at least in part, for destroying it. It’s never been quite clear how much responsibility Haslam has for the Watson trade and contract, or whether all three of him, Berry and Stefanski were equally on board. Given how it’s gone, everyone involved has a vested interest in distancing themselves. Haslam has kept his worst instincts in check for the last several years by maintaining relative continuity with his football operations but there are signs his patience is thinning. 

28 – Raiders owner Mark Davis

Davis’ father, former NFL owner Al Davis, was an NFL legend. Mark is a character in his own right but not the same force of nature or shrewd football mind. His impatience and inability to separate fluff from substance when hiring football decision-makers have seriously held back his team. Davis has employed a dizzying eight head coaches, not including interims, and five GMs since taking over principal ownership in 2011. Las Vegas’ 23-year playoff victory drought is the second-longest active streak in the NFL, behind only the Dolphins. And perhaps most infamously, he led the relocation efforts to take the Raiders out of Oakland and to Las Vegas. Davis loves a splash and his most recent one was bringing on Brady as a minority owner/football czar. Davis has no children and recently sold a bigger chunk of the team to private equity billionaire Egon Durban, who will likely team up with Brady as Davis’ replacement one day. 

29 – Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk

There is fierce competition at the bottom of these ranks for ownership ineptitude, and Strunk has built a compelling case with an eyebrow-raising series of personnel moves over the last few years. Starting in 2022 with the abrupt, late-season firing of GM Jon Robinson after seven years and three straight playoff appearances, Strunk went on a streak of firing or parting ways with a major team decision-maker every year. She fired Vrabel in 2023, saying she wanted to create a more collaborative football structure with GM Ran Carthon at the center, and the two hired HC Brian Callahan. 

Months later, Carthon was out after a 3-14 season and executive Chad Brinker, hired in the spring, was named as the lead football executive, overseeing the hire of new GM Mike Borgonzi from the Chiefs. Callahan was fired after just six weeks, and the buzz was that Strunk would have done it sooner if they hadn’t just played Vrabel and the Patriots, who predictably worked them. This offseason, the turnover continued with Brinker leaving the organization. 

For a team that’s trying to rebuild and develop multiple young players, including the No. 1 pick in 2025, QB Cam Ward, that kind of instability is debilitating. And it all falls at the feet of Strunk for a lack of vision. 

30 – Jets owner Woody Johnson

The Jets have the longest active playoff drought, with 15 seasons since the last time they were in the postseason. Johnson had a roughly four-year stint as the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom in the middle of that, so you can decide whether or not you want to blame him for that span, too. Regardless, there aren’t many owners who generate more negative headlines. Johnson manages to hit most of the worst stereotypes of bad ownership — meddling in football affairs, arrogantly assuming he knows more than the football experts he’s hired, allowing himself to be swayed from plan to plan by various internal and external influences, throwing players and coaches under the bus publicly. The Jets were also annually among the worst teams in the NFLPA player survey before Johnson, sensitive to critical feedback, pushed to have it shut down. 

31 – Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill

Bidwill takes the bottom spot in the hierarchy for me because not only is he dysfunctional as an owner, he’s cheap and unethical. His hiring decisions have been suspect, from giving former GM Steve Keim too much leash to failed coaching hires like Jonathan Gannon, Kliff Kingsbury and Steve Wilks. I don’t have a lot of confidence that things are going to work out with current first-year HC Mike LaFleur, even though I think the young coach has some promise, because he’s on a mismatched timeline with GM Monti Ossenfort, whose performance so far has also been suspect. There’s little sign of long-term vision or planning with the Cardinals, and that falls on Bidwill. 

Bidwill isn’t as infamously cheap as his dad, as he’s been willing to pay out big contracts and put up money for stadium upgrades, including a natural grass field. But the Cardinals scored low on the NFLPA surveys before those were shuttered, with complaints like a questionable locker room and being charged for meals at the team cafeteria. To hit the trifecta, Bidwill is currently the worst owner in terms of off-field scandals. It’s not quite to the degree of Snyder, but Bidwill has been hit with multiple lawsuits for harassment and toxic workplace behavior, as well as a lawsuit by a former team employee for retaliation related to a burner phone scandal that Bidwill was punished for by the NFL (he used a burner phone to communicate with Keim while he was suspended by the NFL for extreme DUI).