It’s That Time Again: NFL Preseason
“Guys aren’t as “calloused up” as they used to be. It’s not even close to the same.”
- John Harbaugh
As a fan, I must confess that the NFL preseason is not my favorite part of the football season. In fact, I've been on the sidelines as a coach, and I can tell you that it's not a phase I particularly enjoyed.
While I may not enjoy it, I recognize that the NFL preseason was once a crucial phase. It used to be a time when players would have had to step up and play at full speed against other teams, a process that determines who is genuinely 'NFL ready.'
Preseason has always been one of the most challenging aspects for some players: the transition from practice to game situations. It's a learning process where a confused player can easily seek guidance in a practice setting. But in a game, a quarterback or a lineman must make split-second decisions on their own.
The side that I disliked the most was the second half of games. In this half, players you knew would not make the team were on the field. They were on teams simply as placeholders and bag holders. The starters were all sitting on the benches in their T-shirts and shorts or getting in the way along the sidelines as they chewed their sunflower seeds.
It's frustrating to see the media make premature judgments after just one or two series of plays in a preseason game. Some players are already being written off, while others are being hyped up for the MVP watch list. This rush to judgment can be detrimental to the players' confidence, the team's morale, and the fans' perception. It's a trend that needs to be addressed and corrected.
Watch the plays that the young quarterbacks (QB) are running. The offensive coordinator (OC) will take advantage of an opposing team using a young player on defense. It may be a rookie cornerback or a young defensive lineman, and a young linebacker on the same side of the field. The OC will call a hitch pass or a “pick play” to “get the ball out quick” to take advantage of the alignment of the young defensive back. Or the OC will run a Run/Pass Option (RPO) play at the young lineman/linebacker set.
Both plays take advantage of a young guy trying to remember the 10,000 things he had been “told” in meetings and on the field.
It's a “good call” for the OC in the moment, but they get no redeeming value for the play call. When the season starts, the young quarterback will think I can throw the same ball vs. a seasoned veteran. The All-Pro DB will bait the young QB into throwing the ball that worked in the preseason. But at the snap, the DB will break on the ball and take it back for a touchdown.
The preseason used to involve throwing the young players into the fire. The coaches could see in real-time how far along or how far behind the young players were.
Today, a young quarterback will be “protected” so as not to have their egos bruised. What they are missing is that the young QB needs to understand how short their time is in the pocket. The rookie QB doesn’t get this in practice, either. In practice, your team’s QB has a different colored jersey, and the defense is told they cannot touch the quarterback. Unfortunately, this means the young, brash media darling’s “Welcome to the NFL” moment will come in their first real game when they hold the ball too long.
Sure, they might take a chance of getting hurt, but the NFL has a 100% chance of being injured. But when they survive the preseason and are tested, they will be better prepared for the next 17+ games that they will be playing.
Today, the preseason schedule has been shortened. This means that the time to prepare for the game's riggers has been limited, so shortcuts are taken in the preparation of the athlete.
All of the players come in with varying preparations. They just came off a six-week period of being away from the team. There is no way to simulate the conditioning one needs to be prepared to play. They are thrown into a situation where the speed of practice is faster than what they came in prepared to work at. Because of this jump in speed and intensity, you begin to see a plethora of injuries during the first few weeks of camp. The intensity backs down once all the starters recover from various injuries from a lack of preparation. Strains and pulls are like a virus in the locker room; once they start, they will visit each player in one way or another.
There used to be a longer two-a-day schedule to get the players in shape. Sports Science has stopped the hard, grueling practices that “calloused” the players for the demands placed on them in the next few months. You had to come In Shape to make it through an “old school” fall camp.
The rise of Sports Science came about because there was a call for “player safety” from the players. They are human, and they wanted to do less. Camp was hard. I don’t blame the players; I blame the teams for caving in to the extent they did. They were in contract negotiations. They were trading money for time in the practice field. The owners didn’t become billionaires by giving money away. They had a: “Let the coaches figure it out” mentality regarding saving money vs cutting practice time.
The problem is that since that decision was made, players have been getting injured at record levels every year thanks to the Sports Science Era. Because of this decision, the number of practices and padded practices have been reduced and limited.
The NFL doesn’t talk about the number of injuries because it doesn’t want to admit that it may have been wrong. The Players Union won’t say anything because the players don’t want to have to practice “hard” day after day.
In no scenario in contact sports does “Less is More” analytics actually work.
When asked about the number of injuries, the NFL reclassifies injuries much like the Department of Homeland Security reclassifies people entering the country illegally. They move the numbers around so that the true story doesn’t screw up their narrative.
They have bought into Sports Science and the AWS motto that they can “predict injuries before they happen,” which is a crock of cow manure! If this were true, you wouldn’t see players getting injured. I think that AWS and the other analytical geniuses need to get new crystal balls because they are wrong more than they are right.
What was once meant to be a preparation phase for the upcoming season is now little more than half-speed football. The players do less on the field and are less prepared for the upcoming season.
The owners are trying to keep their salary cap at a level where they can pay for replacement players when the injuries pour in. The media screams at owners who don’t mortgage their future on a player who might get hurt and miss the season in game one, such as Aaron Rodgers.
ARod only took 10 snaps during the Jets' preseason last year. Evidently, it wasn’t enough; on his fourth snap of the first game, he tore his Achilles tendon on a simple step in the pocket. His preparation was insufficient, and no one “predicted it before it happened.”
This is why I hate the preseason. We know very little going into the preseason, and we don’t know much more at the end of the three-game preseason. The media pours over each snap, making uneducated judgments that fans read or listen to as gospel.
My advice is to wait until the middle of the season to start making your bets. Only then will you know who has made the right choices and who will be looking for a real estate broker in January.
Have an amazing day!
