Once upon a time, millions of Americans would wake up on Sunday morning looking forward to watching their favorite teams take the field. They would watch their local pregame shows getting ready for the game before watching the national pregame shows on CBS, FOX, or NBC when they aired games before losing the AFC package after the 1997 season.
The NFL over the years was an exciting product to watch. Now, they have watered the product down so much that a lot of games, including the best teams struggle which results in a boring game. Take the Eagles and 49ers game from last Sunday.
Everyone in the media called it “The Game of the Year.” However, the game turned into the 49ers routing the Eagles 42-19. In years past when the Cowboys, 49ers, Packers, Broncos, and Steelers were good teams and played against each other, you knew you were in for a good game from start to finish. Now, the NFL has become a boring product to watch.
The first is the kickoff. Fans were ready to see the kicker kick the ball off. If there was a player like Brian Mitchell, Desmond Howard, Devon Hester, Mel Gray, or Dante Hall, there was a chance that it was going to result in a touchdown. However, the NFL moved the kickoff from the 30-yard line to the 35-yard line, making returns impossible. Most kicks go out of bounds.
The NFL did this to prevent high-impact hits. However, while fans did understand with current and former players developing CTE and other injuries, they miss the big hits and someone returning a kickoff for a touchdown. They miss the original game of football.
In the USFL, the kickoff is from the 20-yard line and there were some exciting returns which made that league fun to watch. Meanwhile, the XFL did the kickoff differently separating each other five yards apart while the kicker kicked off from the 35-yard line. They too had some exciting kickoff returns. Both leagues were different but they made it fun to watch.
Next, is the collective bargaining agreement. Why I bring this up is the NFL and the Players Association put in place to eliminate high-impact practices like the nine-on-seven replacement, the half-line drill, the Oklahoma drill, and the bull in the ring.
Eliminating these important practices has resulted in sloppy tackling, poor execution, development, and more injuries. Defensive players can’t hit a quarterback or else they are penalized or trying to avoid hitting a player on the helmet and as a result injuring themselves that might put them out for the season. How many times have you said out loud “What in the hell was that?” Can’t they tackle, wrap a guy up, stop him somehow? That is what they get paid to do and they can’t even do that.
While many will blame artificial turf. But what about the lack of practice? That is more of a factor than the field. That is why the commentary from the formal players constantly bring this fact up. If you don’t practice, how can you perform on game days? Another factor brought is up the schedule. In addition, the scheduling is bad. First, the NFL increased its season from 16 weeks to 17 weeks starting in the 2021 season. The 16-week schedule was perfect and did not need to be changed. Another week means more ad revenue, but also more injuries.
Football games used to be played on Sundays and Mondays with Thanksgiving Thursday being the only time you got to watch a game on Thursdays. Now, the NFL has games on Sunday, Monday, and Thursday, with special games on Friday and Saturday.
The scheduling of these games does not give players enough time to recover after playing a game. A great example is when a team plays on Sunday and has a game on Thursday, they are only given a short recovery time before the game which makes the injuries more likely to happen. Back in the day, Monday nights featured the best teams in the NFL.
Now, every team, including the bad ones get a primetime game when they shouldn’t. The NFL needs to eliminate Thursday Night Football and go back to its roots and have games on Sundays and Monday nights.
I expect to see bad football play in the XFL and USFL because those players have not played in a long time, working their way back from injuries, or looking for one more paycheck but these NFL players make millions of dollars and fans expect them to play at a high level and taking away practice has hurt them and preventing them from becoming great athletes.
Not long ago, six-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady was a guest on the Stephen A. Smith Show and explained why he thinks the NFL product is worse than ever.
Tom Brady made several good points. However, Brady also took advantage of these rules. It’s nice to see that he is seeing it from a different side rather than him being on the field.
As he mentioned, the coaching is not good. The NFL teams are moving coaches up way too fast who have not earned their stripes. You look at the coaches today, the majority of them don’t know what to do and think they are hotshots. They are not Andy Reid, John Harbaugh, Bill Belichick, and Mike Tomlin, guys who were there for a long time before becoming head coaches.
Today, these coaches don’t know what to do in situations and are given a short window to either have the team in Super Bowl contention in three years or they are fired. In addition, you can blame the owners for being impatient unlike in years past. Some of these coaches will get recycled but the results will remain the same.
Take Frank Reich for example. He began his coaching career in 2006 with the Indianapolis Colts as a coaching intern. He would go on to be an offensive coaching staff assistant, quarterbacks coach, and wide receivers coach. As an intern in 2006, the Colts won Super Bowl XLI.
After Indianapolis, Reich became the wide receivers coach for the Arizona Cardinals in 2012 and the following year as the quarterbacks coach for the San Diego Chargers. For two seasons, he was the offensive coordinator for the Chargers but was fired in 2016 after the Chargers finished 31st in rushing and struggled on offense.
Reich would get a second chance as an offensive coordinator for the Philadelphia Eagles under Doug Pederson. Reich helped the Eagles win Super Bowl LII and later returned to Indianapolis as the head coach. In his five seasons with the Colts, Reich led them to two playoff appearances. However, he was fired in 2022 after a 3-5-1 start.
Reich would get a second chance as a head coach this time with the Carolina Panthers. However, the team went 1-10 and Reich was fired again for the second straight season. While Reich is not a good head coach, he is a good offensive coordinator. Coaches have to know their strengths. Sure, they can give head coaching a try but if it fails twice, you are better off as a coordinator. Not everyone is meant to be head coaches but are great coordinators.
The next one up that has made the NFL a bad product is the referees. Sure, they are following the rule book but the officials have become part of the game. So far this season, there have been 2,348 penalties with the Seattle Seahawks leading with 91 calls against them. The second most penalized team this year is the Dallas Cowboys with 90, and the least penalized team is the Las Vegas Raiders with 56.
Rules like defensive pass interference, holding, taunting, roughing the passer, and false starts are common in today’s game. Back in the day, those hits were allowed but because of player safety were put in place to protect players, especially quarterbacks. The officials have thrown more flags than quarterbacks completing passes. The NFL has taken the majority of violence out of a violent sport so they can’t get sued anymore.
Lastly, development. As mentioned above, practice has basically been eliminated. Therefore, players are not developing into world-caliber athletes that they can be. Many years ago, the NFL had the World League of Football, later NFL Europe to send players and develop them. Because of NFL Europe, guys like Kurt Warner, Jake Delhomme, Jon Kitna, Dante Hall, and Adam Vinatieri benefited from playing in the league.
In recent years, the NFL eliminated one preseason game from four to three, leaving players a short time to get game footage and show the coaches that they belong on the team. This has led to leagues like the USFL, XFL, IFL, and CFL to provide players with opportunities to play football and develop.
Because of this, NFL scouts go to these games and pick off the good players from each league, which stinks because the majority of these guys get put on practice squads like Nathan Rourke and Alex McGough who have started games and are overlooked by these NFL teams.
I wish the NFL would do away with the practice roster and let these guys go to the other leagues and play football but the practice squad money is better than what most of the leagues are paying players and that’s why they will take it and wait for an opportunity to play in the NFL.
Until the owner’s demand change, the NFL product will continue to decline. If it weren’t for gambling and fantasy football, many fans would’ve turned these games off and done something else with their time. The NFL was once a fun product to watch and I hope someday we will see it again.
