While former NFL player Cris Collinsworth is expected to have a big payday, the situation is not the same for many employees at his company. In 2014, Collinsworth purchased a majority stake in Pro Football Focus, hoping to turn it into an analytics powerhouse in mainstream media. But over the years, even as Collinsworth’s business got major investments, it continued to face financial constraints. As such, the latest reports revealed that Collinsworth had to make a tough call with his company. 

“A slew of Pro Football Focus employees were laid off on Monday as Cris Collinsworth sold the company’s enterprise business side to Teamworks in a deal reportedly worth nine figures,” Front Office Sports’ Ryan Glasspiegel reported in a recent article. “A source told Front Office Sports that PFF called employees to an all-hands meeting on Monday, during which it was announced that about half of them would be moving to the new company. PFF possessed both a content side and a data team – all 32 NFL teams subscribe to the company’s enterprise data set – and most of those who survived the layoffs were on the data side, a source said.”

Over the last three years, Pro Football Focus has faced growing concerns over its ability to lead in the world of player performance tracking. The departure of many high-profile employees also created internal instability at Cris Collinsworth’s company, while competitors started entering the analytics market with their own tracking technologies.

As such, while hoping for a change in fortune, Cris Collinsworth’s company secured a $50 million investment in 2022 from a private equity firm named Silver Lake. Shortly after, Front Office Sports also reported that PFF laid off 16 full-time employees and 11 interns during an earlier round of cuts. Those layoffs reportedly accounted for roughly 7% of the salaried workforce at Collinsworth’s company.

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Despite the layoffs, Silver Lake reportedly felt that PFF’s consumer-facing products could drive long-term growth. But losing key personnel and reportedly dealing with management issues in recent years only complicated matters for Cris Collinsworth’s business. At the same time, competition also intensified on the business-to-business analytics side for PFF.

So, recently, Cris Collinsworth made the tough decision to sell the enterprise business side of his company, and that triggered the most recent layoffs. The restructuring has reportedly split the PFF’s workforce into two. While some employees transitioned to the company that acquired PFF, others lost their jobs altogether. Currently, the total number of employees laid off by PFF remains unclear, but several staff members have publicly confirmed their exit.

What does the takeover mean for Cris Collinsworth’s business?

Last month, when Wide Left’s Arif Hasan first reported the acquisition deal of Cris Collinsworth’s business, the biggest concern was the uncertainty surrounding PFF’s consumer-facing content division. Teamworks, an analytics and multimodal software company, which was reported to acquire PFF, rarely invests in media content. But Hasan’s latest report suggests that while the deal has been finalized, the plans for PFF have become clearer.

“Can confirm again, the deal is north of $100M. Cris Collinsworth joins Teamworks in an ‘advisory role.’ Teamworks plans to integrate its vision tracking into the PFF workflow, potentially to create an integrated product,” Arif Hasan reported via X on Monday.

In the sales announcement, it was revealed that Cris Collinsworth will retain control of the consumer side at PFF. So, the public-facing content arm at PFF remains separate from the enterprise data division. And as per Hasan, Teamworks will operate the business-to-business analytics portion under its own structure and brand. Meanwhile, PFF’s content division will spin off into a separate company.

But with the acquisition of PFF underway, another big concern is whether NBC might move away from PFF grades if Cris Collinsworth no longer owns the underlying data company. Since 2006, PFF grades have appeared on-screen during NFL games, often next to player names and statistics. As such, PFF grades have become an integral part of Sunday Night Football broadcasts despite NFL players and analysts debating their accuracy. 

Last season, former NFL player J.J. Watt also questioned the accuracy of PFF’s grading system during his appearance on The Pat McAfee Show. According to Watt, PFF’s grades are not accurate because they are assigned without knowing the NFL player’s assignment on any particular play.

For now, it is not clear whether the acquisition of Cris Collinsworth’s company changes any of that debate around the PFF grades. But while Collinsworth still has control over the consumer side of PFF, those grades are expected to remain a part of Sunday Night Football broadcasts.