I had some fun two years ago by naming the worst owners in the NFL. Now with one member dead and others ready to ascend the throne, I figure it’s time for an update. This isn’t just about team performance (though that counts), it is about being an awful human being as well. Held your city hostage for a stadium? Name in the Epstein files? Constantly hiring idiots? This list is for you. BEHOLD…the Worst Owners in the NFL!!!
Honorable Mentions – This section is for the owners who simply don’t count. They haven’t been involved in any scandals, but their teams are completely irrelevant, they have no plan, and are just seemingly happy to be part of the NFL Owners Club. In the immortal words of Office Space, “What is it… you’d say… you do here?”
- Michael Bidwell – Arizona Cardinals
- He is the 3rd Bidwell Cardinals owner since 1933 and outside of the movie Jerry McGuire and a championship in 1948, they only have 10 playoff appearances for anyone to remember the family for.
- He does have some workplace harassment and discrimination claims under his belt but that’s par for the course for an NFL owner and not enough to stand out amongst some stiff competition
- Mike Brown – Cincinnati Bengals
- Take away Joe Burrow and the Bengals are possibly the worst and most insignificant franchise in professional sports over the last 35 years
- Brown is another nepo owner
- Amy Adams Strunk – Tennessee Titans
- The Titans do play football, as they are listed as one of the 32 NFL franchises. After that, I’ve got nothing for you. It’s been 20 years since they had a relevant QB.
- Nepo owner
Now for the Top 5. This isn’t to say that Mark Davis, David Tepper, and Jerry Jones are good owners, they just do not have anything new to complain about since the last time we did this list.
#5 – Stephen Ross – Miami Dolphins
Stephen Ross really likes whoring out Hard Rock Stadium with F1, Tennis, the Miami Hurricanes, and any number of other ventures coming to old Joe Robbie. If you think Stephen Ross didn’t fully pay attention to everyone’s favorite NFL retirement home, then you don’t know Stephen Ross. Despite his other endeavors he was still allegedly able to bribe his head coach to lose games, tamper with Tom Brady and Sean Payton, and get his team to forfeit draft picks. Where does he find the time???
That doesn’t even include the on the field product which has been mired in mediocrity for the entirety of his tenure. Since he became the majority owner in 2009, the Dolphins have managed all of ZERO division titles, three playoff appearances, and ZERO playoff wins. Probably even worse for the health of the franchise has been that it has only finished last twice in that time, meaning not many high draft picks. When they did pick high, they blew it with Tua Tagovailoa over Justin Herbert and Dion Jordan over Lane Johnson. Despite these screw ups, he kept Chris Grier making these decisions for a decade!!!
Now that team is in cap hell because it had to eat Tua’s gross extension. On top of that, the Dolphins signed free agent QB Malik Willis. What’s the goal there? At best, he keeps the team competent and out of good draft position. At worst he’s simply a waste of money. Well, at least you have one of the highest paid running backs in the league! Yikes.
#4 – Woody Johnson – New York Jets
To give you an idea of how privileged a life Woody Johnson has had, he was the heir to the Johnson and Johnson fortune and went to a prestigious boarding school in New York. Despite this, he went to the University of Arizona and then went straight to the top of his family’s multinational, billion-dollar pharmaceutical business. After that it was the Jets, some workplace harassment, light tax evasion and cronying around politics until he received an Ambassadorship appointment. Surely this life of leisure and privilege allowed him to run a top-notch pro sports team, right???
Since he bought the team in 2000, the Jets have the 7th worst record in the NFL. As you get closer to the present though, that record only gets worse with only 1 winning season and no playoff appearances since 2010. The team’s best QB during the entire Johnson era is easily Chad Pennington. Ironically, he was also the first QB drafted during the Johnson era followed by this list of luminaries: Brooks Bollinger, Brad Smith, Kellen Clemens, Erik Ainge, Mark Sanchez, Greg McElroy, Geno Smith, Tajh Boyd, Bryce Petty, Christian Hackenberg, Sam Darnold, James Morgan, Zach Wilson, Jordan Travis, and Cade Klubnik. Their current plan is to run back Geno Smith a second time now that he’s even worse because Dante Moore decided to go back to college rather than get drafted by them.
There ain’t no NFL Owners like 4th generation heir nepo owners, huh? This dingus’s name is actually Woody f’n Johnson! LOL
#3 – Josh Harris – Washington Commanders
There are your friendly neighborhood billionaire idiot owners like Woody Johnson and there are your bad people like Josh Harris and the last two people on this list. Harris recently moonlighted prominently in the Epstein files (though not nearly as explicitly as his business partner Leon Black) but gets a free pass so far simply by not being as outwardly shitty as Washington’s previous owner Dan Snyder. Let’s give Harris his chance to shine.
As an owner of the Philadelphia 76ers he recently held the city hostage for several years by threatening to move to NJ and then to displace an entire neighborhood so he could build a separate arena from the Flyers because sharing is for the poors. Then after getting everything approved, he backed out of the deal with the city because the NBA offered him a WNBA franchise and the Flyers offered to go halfsies on a completely different new arena that no one needs. It’s the little things too like landing his helicopter on a children’s soccer field while they were playing, getting shamed by his own players into paying his employees throughout Covid, and having absolutely no ability to understand the complexity of a handshake. Have I mentioned that none of his sports teams (Sixers, Commanders, Devils, and Crystal Palace) have ever even played for a championship?
Oh right, football! He has only owned the Commanders for 3 seasons, but the team has managed a robust -190 point differential in that time. They lucked into QB Jayden Daniels, but instead of growing a team around him, they traded in much of their draft capital for old guys and will soon run into a monster Daniels extension combined with a talentless roster. Things are going great!
#2 – Jimmy Haslem – Cleveland Browns
Since Haslem bought the Browns in 2012, they are an awful 78-150-1 with two playoff appearances and 12 losing seasons including one with ZERO wins. Their most recent proud accomplishment was having 5 terrible QBs all competing for the same starting job just last year! Talking about how bad and poorly run the Browns are on a year in year out level isn’t worth the time when it can all be summed up with the Deshaun Watson fiasco.
In truly the worst decision in sports transactional history, after Watson was accused of sexually assaulting around 100 women and unofficially suspended for the season by the Texans, the Browns had seen enough…THEY HAD TO HAVE HIM!!! 6 draft picks including 3 firsts later, Watson was coming to Cleveland. But wait, there’s more! They also signed him to a fully guaranteed $230m contract that was specifically designed so that Watson would only lose a minimal amount if he were suspended in 2022. Since the deal, Watson has played 19 games and split QB duties with Jacoby Brissett, Joe Flacco, Dorian Thompson-Robinson, P.J. Walker, Jeff Driskel, Jameis Winston, Bailey Zappe, Dillon Gabriel, and Shedeur Sanders.
And that’s the good half of the story!!! The worse part is Haslem and his Pilot Flying J company allegedly stealing from truck drivers by perpetrating a company wide rebate fraud. Somehow other top executives were charged in the fraud but not Haslem himself. The company agreed to pay $92m in fines. This is the same company he sold but not before allegedly paying off executives to inflate the value of the company to bilk his new buyer of some extra millions. Currently he is reveling in moving the Browns out of Cleveland proper in order to build a new domed stadium. Despite breaking ground, the situation is currently embroiled in several lawsuits. Threatening to move the Browns out of Cleveland in any way, shape, or form, is EXTREMELY low.
As if stinking things up with the Browns and his own businesses wasn’t enough, he now owns 25% of the Milwaukee Bucks, just in time to force out and trade Giannis with a series of terrible moves.
#1 – Steve Tisch – New York Giants
You have to be a special kind of d-bag to dethrone last year’s champion and certified forever shithead Jimmy Haslem. Well, congratulations to Steve Tisch our 2026 champion. How did he do it???
Tisch really is the total package. Not only is he a Hollywood nepo baby who inherited his stake in the NY Giants AND incompetent when it comes to overseeing one of the premier franchises in sports, but he was also mentioned heavily in the Epstein Files! A true virtuoso performance from one of the all-time worst.
His Epstein links are not that of Josh Harris where there is at least some plausible deniability as to participating in the activities. No, Tisch was a client. Epstein scouted women, especially young women for Tisch who even leveraged his ties to the movie industry in allegedly sleeping with them. Tisch is the kind of person who could name names in what is going on, but that would mean admitting to what everyone already knows he was a part of.
On the field, Tisch has been in charge with his idiot cohort John Mara since 2005. They actually have two Super Bowls together, but since the last in 2011 they have been outscored by nearly 900 points, have 1 playoff win, and have a record of 83-145-1. They botched the end of Eli Manning‘s career, botched Saquon Barkley‘s contract situation, botching Daniel Jones‘s contract situation, hired some of the most unprepared coaches you have ever seen (remember Joe Judge?), and still employ one of the most simple-minded GMs in sports in Joe Schoen who just happened to follow up someone even worse in Dave Gettleman. Thanks to Schoen’s incredible control of the franchise, they managed to only win games when it would screw up their draft position, narrowly missing out on the #1 pick the last 3 seasons.
No talk of the New York Giants would be complete though without mentioning the famous Fan Appreciation Day incident of 2021. As a reward for shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for season tickets to watch the team go 4-13 and get outscored by 158 points, each ticket package was given a coupon for One Free Medium Fountain Pepsi.
We may have to retire Tisch next year or name the award after him because I don’t know how anyone is going to top this one.
Photo: John Munson / Associated Press
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