Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

I listened to some of Roger Goodell's press conference, and heard the media's opinion about it afterwards. Both aspects were 'much ado about nothing' in some sense, but I figure now was a good time to list some thoughts on Goodell's tenure and the current state of the NFL.

*I'm not a fan of Goodell, but I do give him credit for trying to 'clean up' the game. I do think that the large (excessive?) amount of roughness penalties called on hitting defenseless WRs has cut down on the number of 'kill shots' and changed the way DBs play. I also think that the 'roughing the passer' penalties has limited the Siragusa-type "drive into turf" QB hits. As a fan, I get frustrated at times with the inconsistency of these types of calls (especially the QB hits), but I think they've had an overall positive effect on the game.

*I think a few factors have really hurt the quality of the product on the field...

*The roster turnover is seemingly at an all-time high...I think I heard the Patriots have 11 players with Super Bowl experience, and they were just in the Super Bowl 2 years ago. The number of young, inexperienced players a team has on its roster is at an all-time high. I think part of this is salary cap (can't afford too many vets), part of this is the large amount of injuries (possibly related to PEDs and/or lack of practice time) forcing teams to put these guys on the roster, and part of this could be the 'concussion issue' where guys retire after 8 or 9 years instead of 13 or 14 years.

*Too many teams, and TV saturation. Not enough good players to go around in general, not enough good QBs to go around specifically. I think the 'optimum' size of the NFL was from 1970-1975, with 26 teams. I think you could cut 6 teams from the NFL and not really lose anything, but that's not going to happen. So what is the solution? Stop having bad teams on national TV. Ratings are down 8%. Make the national TV games more of a 'must-see' TV event. I think in this age of parity, flex scheduling is a must. You just can't forecast that the Falcons would be good this year, so they weren't ever on national TV. Meanwhile, it seemed like the Jags were the Thursday night staple. Speaking of which, do away with Thursday night football entirely. The games are always terrible. Have one Sunday night game and one Monday night game, and have one of those games be the flex-scheduled "Game of the Week".

*Ease the restrictions on contact practices in the next CBA. I think perhaps the lack of contact practices has led to the large amount of holding penalties and missed tackles. Guys just aren't up to game speed. This is just conjecture on my part, but I do think the lack of practice time paired with the roster turnover is affecting the quality of play.

*Consider having some type of NFL-equivalent to the "Larry Bird Rule", where teams can keep their own players at a reduced cap hit. Its kind of stupid to me that Seattle's recent run of success was somewhat dependent on Russell Wilson's contract. Reward teams for drafting and developing their players. It seems like the good teams have to get rid of 2 or 3 good starters just to keep their QB under contract. This enforces the NFL's 'parity' model...yet you still kind of need an elite QB to win in the postseason, but those elite QB teams aren't 'great teams', they just have an advantage at the QB position.

Bryan wrote:Speaking of which, do away with Thursday night football entirely. The games are always terrible. Have one Sunday night game and one Monday night game, and have one of those games be the flex-scheduled "Game of the Week".

I am not a huge Thursday night fan but two of the best games of the season were on Thursday. One was the Week 2 Jets-Bills game. That resembled an old AFL game. Each team averaged over nine yards per pass. That rarely happens. The other quality Thursday game was the Redskins-Cowboys one. I am not sure why people rarely complain about Thanksgiving games. There were some other Thursday games that were decent.

JWL wrote:I am not sure why people rarely complain about Thanksgiving games.

Thanksgiving comes once a year, Thursday comes once a week. Oversaturation, IMO.

It will be interesting to see if the NFL addresses the quality of play concerns with a minor league setup of some kind. In its brief life with often just six teams, the World League/NFLE produced some quarterbacks who saw significant time on NFL fields, for instance, including Kurt Warner, Scott Mitchell and Jake Delhomme, two of whom took teams to the Super Bowl.

Bryan wrote:

JWL wrote:I am not sure why people rarely complain about Thanksgiving games.

Thanksgiving comes once a year, Thursday comes once a week. Oversaturation, IMO.

You missed my point because I maybe didn't make it well. I hear bitching about the Thursday games being crappy and the players don't have proper recovery time and it ruins fantasy football and office pick 'em pools and this and that. However, I rarely hear this same bitching about the Thanksgiving games. The teams that play on Thanksgiving still played the prior Sunday.

I understand your point. One week- not a big deal. If Dak Prescott has three days off between games one week a season- no big deal. if Blake Bortles has three days off between games some week in October- the league sucks.

I think the Thursday night games are unnecessary. I understand why the NFL has Thanksgiving games, and I enjoy them in part due to the holiday.

preeths wrote:It will be interesting to see if the NFL addresses the quality of play concerns with a minor league setup of some kind. In its brief life with often just six teams, the World League/NFLE produced some quarterbacks who saw significant time on NFL fields, for instance, including Kurt Warner, Scott Mitchell and Jake Delhomme, two of whom took teams to the Super Bowl.

Don't forget Brad Johnson.

JWL wrote:if Dak Prescott has three days off between games one week a season- no big deal. if Blake Bortles has three days off between games some week in October- the league sucks.

Couldn't agree more. Make this same point to my friend who's view on TNF is strictly taken from what the media says because he doesn't watch the games (and neither do most media).

Scream "player safety" yet we have decades of Thursday Thanksgiving games and no one said anything before.

"Quality of play", almost everyone uses the Jaguars example and yes, they're garbage but they're on once. Every team plays on Thursday but if you read an article on TNF it'll make it out like the "Jaguars-Titans" play eachother 16 times a season and all their games on are Thursday night.

The quality of play is fine. Well, fine compared to your average NFL game these days. You just have to watch every game as opposed to somehow missing the entire TNF schedule and only watching when the Jaguars (or other bad teams) play.

None of those complaints are valid. The only complaint (other than color rush unis) which I believe was Bryan's point, is over-saturation. I always look at that two ways;

1. TNF definitely isn't needed and the only Thursday games each year should be the first game of the season, the Thanksgiving games and at most a random late-season TNF game or two.

2. More football is never a bad thing.

It's kind of how I think of Bowl games in college. I would very much prefer that there was 5 or so, can live with about 15, max. Instead over half of FBS teams play in a bowl game. Ridiculous, but it's football I get to watch so while it's stupid the games exist I can't complain that they're on TV and especially can't complain that it's day after day after day so during that period I don't ever have to do non-football nonsense. I can just watch football.

Bryan wrote:I think the Thursday night games are unnecessary. I understand why the NFL has Thanksgiving games, and I enjoy them in part due to the holiday.

I understand your stance. My earlier post was more a thing of me complaining about the stuff I see elsewhere on the internet.

The games that bother me the most are actually the Sunday night games. A Thursday night game ending after 11 pm my time when I have to go to work the following morning doesn't bother me. A Sunday night game ending between 11:30 and midnight when I have a full 5-day work week ahead of me and I have to physically be in work at 8:30 a.m. is a problem. If my team is not playing and it is a blowout, off it goes early. For instance, the Chiefs-Steelers game was off before the second quarter. I don't do that with the Thursday games.

I think a big part of the Thursday night issue is the fact that they tend to be divisional match-ups and inclusion of every team. Jags, Titans has been a Thursday Night game a lot it seems. Simply flexing Thursdays a month at a time would go a long way to debunking the "bad football due to short week" theory.