Fans Say Sell: Ranking NFL Owners by Pressure to Cash Out
NFL fans live and breathe for their teams — but not always for the people who own them. While a promising young quarterback can buy patience and a playoff run can drown out boos, fan frustration with ownership bubbles up fast when things go sideways. Chants of “sell the team” are no new phenomenon. But in a world where you no longer need a ticket to the game to make your voice heard, NFL brass are now more than ever subject to the fury of their most loyal customers.
We analyzed over two million social media posts and comments across X and Reddit since Super Bowl LIX to measure which owners are facing the most heat from their fan bases. The result is our Sell-O-Meter rating, a scoring system derived from the Fan Fury Index, built from mentions, proportional share of team chatter, and consistency over time. With this, we’ve quantified exactly which fan bases most want their owners to live out their retirement on a beach somewhere, rather than in team meetings. Jerry Jones better stock up on sunblock, because Cowboys fans are ready to personally escort him to Sandals Jamaica.
Key Takeaways
- Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys dominate the “Sell the Team” sentiment with an Extreme rating of 95, the highest across all 32 NFL franchises.
- Four teams hit “Extreme” levels of owner dissatisfaction (90+), with the Jets, Panthers, and Texans joining America’s Team in the reddest of red zones.
- The New York Giants ownership endures a high level of fan backlash, earning the Mara-Tisch collective a Fan Fury Index of 78/100.
- Pittsburgh’s Art Rooney II landed a moderate rating of 58/100, showing long-term fan loyalty can sometimes supersede recent shortcomings.
- Eagles’ Jeffrey Lurie enjoys a low sell sentiment, despite recent playoff disappointments.
The Boos Are Deafening
Jerry Jones sitting atop this list surprises absolutely nobody who’s scrolled through NFL Twitter lately. With a Fan Fury Index of 95, Cowboys fans aren’t just frustrated; they’re downright exhausted. Jones’ most recent head-scratcher, trading their best player, Micah Parsons, to Green Bay, hasn’t just drawn the ire of fans. Cowboys legend Michael Irvin publicly blasted Jerry Jones for putting his ego ahead of the franchise’s best interest.
Still, as long as Cowboys fans can stop by their nearest HEB on the way to the stadium for a paper bag to wear over their heads, Jerry will keep laughing all the way to the bank.
Not far behind are the New York Jets, where fan vitriol burns so hot, not even Fireman Ed can extinguish the flame. A playoff drought stretching into its second decade and high-profile misfires like the Aaron Rodgers saga have made Woody Johnson a lightning rod.
Carolina Panthers fans have soured on David Tepper at record speed, but he can’t toss a beer on all of them. Since purchasing the team in 2018, Tepper has cycled through six head coaches, thrown drinks at fans, and presided over the worst winning percentage in the NFL. So it’s no wonder fans are ready for a new owner just seven years later.
In Houston, Cal McNair may not grab headlines like Jones or Tepper, but fan resentment simmers. Years of instability, unpopular decisions, and the shadow of his father’s controversies keep Texans fans calling for new leadership.
The Texans’ Cal McNair rounds out the Extreme category at 91, with Houston fans particularly incensed about the handling of the Deshaun Watson situation, and of course, the Jack Easterby era. The former team chaplain who somehow became executive vice president of football operations, alienating stars like DeAndre Hopkins and J.J. Watt while turning the organization into what players called a toxic environment. His influence over McNair was so bizarre that Sports Illustrated ran a profile of him reporting, “Those inside the Texans’ building describe an atmosphere of mistrust, a state of constant chaos and a sense that he isn’t fit for the roles he’s taken on.”
Fans on the Warpath
Seven teams landed in the “High” category (rating 70-89), representing fan bases where the anger hasn’t quite reached critical mass but the pot is definitely boiling.
Jimmy Haslam’s Browns (87) have become the poster child for organizational dysfunction. Since purchasing the team in 2012, Haslam has employed six head coaches (including interim) and six general managers. The Watson trade and absurd $230 million, fully guaranteed contract might go down as one of the worst decisions in NFL history, both from a football and PR perspective.
Amy Adams Strunk’s Titans (83) shocked some by ranking this high, but Nashville fans haven’t forgotten the unceremonious dumping of Mike Vrabel, who in 2025 returned to New England, where he won three Super Bowls as a player, and began orchestrating their rebuild as head coach. The team’s identity crisis and inability to develop a quarterback have Titans faithful questioning whether ownership understands the NFL in 2025.
John Mara’s Giants (78) are a masterclass in how nepotism destroys franchises. The co-owner inherited the team from his father but apparently not the wisdom to run it. Mara’s fingerprints are all over every bad decision: paying Daniel Jones $160 million, letting Saquon Barkley walk to the division rival Eagles (where he immediately became an MVP candidate), and let’s not forget his infamous press conference blunders.
Mark Davis and the Raiders (80) face a unique situation. Some fans appreciate his loyalty to the franchise’s renegade identity and his spectacular bowl cut, but the goodwill ends there. The Antonio Brown fiasco was just the appetizer. The main course was hiring Josh McDaniels, watching him destroy the locker room, and then paying him $40 million to go away. Davis seems to make decisions based on his last dinner date at P.F. Chang’s (his actual favorite restaurant, not a joke). The move to Vegas may have brought a few new fans who don’t know better, but the old Oakland diehards now actively root for Davis to fail.
Grumbles in the Stands
The “Moderate” category (50-69) includes some eyebrow-raising additions, such as the Steelers’ Art Rooney II (58), which seems almost sacrilegious for one of the NFL’s most storied franchises. But dig deeper, and you’ll find frustration over keeping Mike Tomlin despite playoff futility, loyalty to aging stars over necessary rebuilds, and a general sense that the organization is living in the past.
Surprisingly, the Jaguars’ Shad Khan (62) sits at a relatively tame 62, firmly in “Moderate” territory. This is the same owner who hired Urban Meyer, a decision so catastrophic it deserves its own Netflix Untold. Meyer lasted 13 games, during which he kicked his own player, skipped the team plane to grind on coeds at his bar, called his assistant coaches “losers,” and created what can only be described as a college dictatorship in a room full of millionaire professionals.
Josh Harris’s Commanders (59) actually represents a serious improvement. Under Dan Snyder, this team would have shattered the scale. The relatively moderate score tells us fans are willing to give new ownership a honeymoon period, though promising young quarterback Jayden Daniels is surely earning the franchise grace from the fans.
Owners in the Clear (For Now)
At the bottom of the list, where low scores mean happy fans, some results make perfect sense while others might surprise you.
Jeffrey Lurie’s Eagles (29) show that winning cures almost everything. Despite the late-season collapse, Eagles fans remember the Super Bowl trophy and trust the organization’s process. While the Chiefs’ Clark Hunt (28) benefits from the Patrick Mahomes effect and three Super Bowls in five years. You could probably set Arrowhead on fire, and Chiefs fans would thank Hunt for the warmth.
Dean Spanos of the Chargers (26) scored just 26. The same owner who moved the team from San Diego, makes them play second fiddle to the Rams in their own building, and hasn’t won a Super Bowl since…ever? Online chatter suggests Chargers fans have either achieved zen-like acceptance of their fate or there simply aren’t enough of them left to complain. Every home game at SoFi looks like an away game, with opposing fans routinely taking over the stadium. Spanos destroyed a loyal fan base in San Diego for the glamour of LA, only to become the fourth most popular football team in a city that barely knows they exist (after the Rams, Raiders, and USC). Yet somehow, only a 26 on the Fan Fury Index. The most logical explanation? You can’t tweet “Sell the Team” if you’ve already stopped caring entirely.
What This Really Means
The pattern here isn’t just about winning and losing. The “Extreme” and “High” categories are dominated by owners who meddle, who treat franchises like toys, who prioritize everything except football operations. Jerry Jones insisting on being GM, Woody Johnson taking advice from his teenage son, David Tepper’s micromanagement; these are the sins fans can’t forgive.
Meanwhile, the owners with low sell sentiment either stay out of the way (Lurie, Hunt) or have earned trust through recent success. The Packers, being publicly owned, didn’t register a score, and that has us thinking, wouldn’t it be nice if fans could own the entire league?
Methodology
The Fan Fury Index measures how strongly fans want NFL team owners to sell by analyzing more than two million posts, replies, and comments on X (Twitter) and Reddit since Super Bowl LIX (February 9, 2025). It generates a single 0–100 score based on four weighted components: Mentions Volume (40%), Proportional Share of team-related chatter (30%), Frequency of sentiment across unique days (20%), and Engagement Rates (10%). Mentions were tracked using phrases such as “sell the team,” “new owner,” and related hashtags. Final results are scaled from 0 to 100 and grouped into five categories: Extreme (90–100), High (70–89), Moderate (50–69), Low (30–49), and Minimal (0–29), which together form the Sell-O-Meter rating.
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