Top of the morning to you sports fans!
The sun has yet to rise in the east, but your favorite sports junkie is up early getting in his fix. I have no idea why I am up at 5:00 in the morning on a Saturday, but I felt it was appropriate to share my insomnia with whoever else might be up at the crack of dawn.
One explanation for my apparent restlessness may be the fact that I missed a plethora of preseason football this evening and instead decided to make it a “Redbox night” and watch Death at a Funeral. I know this seems blasphemous for a football addict like myself, but even I’m beginning to have less patience with these horrible preseason games. And how could I pass up to watch Martin Lawrence, Chris Rock, and Tracy Morgan all on the same screen? (Actually, it wouldn’t have been that hard to pass up this movie but that’s another blog.)
These preseason games have been quite dreadful and you can’t really learn much about the teams unless they really suck (ahem…Bills). You can get an idea of what individuals bring to the table, but the game plans are all backwards, and the execution is nauseating after the 1st quarter. It’s just bad football.
When the league initially proposed reducing the preseason to two games instead of four, I was up in arms. How could they take away from the sanctity of the game? The exhibition season is so important for the futures of young up and coming players and coaching evaluations. Veteran players need the preseason to fine tune their skills and prepare their bodies for the physical grind of a 16-game season. It just didn’t make sense to me. I could understand why the casual fan would want to get rid of these “meaningless games” but the great football minds of the world want to do away with two whole preseason games? But now I can see why. Four games is way too long of a preseason. I’m sick of watching this crap after one week. And no, it has nothing to do with the fact that my beloved Cowboys have yet to score and offensive touchdown and both the Redskins and Eagles lit up the scoreboard last night. You just don’t need a full four games to figure out what players’ roles on a team are going to be. Everything is constantly changing during the season anyway so why even pretend that the preseason somehow sets the blueprint for how your team will look in December?
Of course necessary changes will have to be made with the subtraction of preseason games and additions to the regular season. With two more regular season games, comes the added opportunity for major injuries to star players. And the league needs its stars. The rosters will have to be expanded and the practice squads will have to be bigger. They will probably need to add an extra bye week for each team, especially since the first couple of games may end up getting played in the heat of late August. They will also have to change the nature and format of the offseason so these guys don’t get overworked. But the football brain trust should be able to handle minute details such as these. The question is, what kind of final product will an 18-game season produce?
Well there will be more “meaningless” games toward the end of the season as the contenders being to stockpile wins and dungeon dwellers pack it in and start preparing for their early first round pick. So yes, there is the potential that some teams will have de facto preseason games in the regular season but at least it won’t be mandated. Some teams may want to play through ‘til the end and try to go undefeated. And most will actually have something on the line at the end of the season. So just like in the current system, you will have some crappy games at the end of the season but most of them will make or break a team.
There is also the stark revelation that pretty much every major single-season record will be broken relatively quickly. As much as it pains me to see longstanding season records be toppled, the old saying goes, “records are made to be broken.” As much as I hate clichés, this one can be taken with the grain of salt because people in the modern era will understand that the records were broken under certain contexts and that won’t diminish from game averages or career records. Whether it is 16 games or 18 games, I don’t think anyone will ever break Emmitt Smith’s all time rushing record (which is a testament to his greatness and it is a shame that he is as underrated as he is). Most records will remain intact, with exception to cumulative season totals which is only really significant when you talk about rushing yards.
2,000 yards rushing by an individual has always been the measure of an iconic season for an NFL running back. With addition of two more regular season games, this will still be the case. It is a very different league from even 10 years ago. Teams are not only passing the ball a lot more, but now the running back by committee is so popular that it is rare to see a back even get 300 carries. Even in an 18 game season a back would have to average over 100 yards rushing per game and play in every game. Those are two things that are guaranteed not to happen more than a few times in a decade. Every other record (including all touchdown records) is insignificant in the seasonal context and should be properly applied over the length of a career or on a game average basis.
Now that we got that out of the way, I have one more radical proposal that I would like to make. I’m going to sound like a wild man when I go to this one, but I want you all to bear with me and hear me out. The final week of the season should be flex week. Yes, a “flex week”! My system will help with bye weeks, competitiveness at the end of the season, and maybe even keep undefeated seasons alive, because with an 18 game season a true undefeated season is probably impossible. But I digress, with the flex week all teams that have locked up a top seed will either get the week off (bye week) or be matched against a team that is not in playoff contention. Hell, you could even give that top team a choice, so they could conceivably end their season at 17 games and start preparing for the playoffs. The bottom feeding teams would be at the mercy of the higher seeds in this instance, but…screw ‘em. The top seeds would also have to choose between the added revenue of one final meaningless game or the health of their players. Anyway, the other flex games would be a play in game for teams fighting for a final playoff spot. Instead of having bunch of calculations and hypothetical determine who enters the tournament, just start the tournament a week early and have the final combatants face off against each other. I would have loved to see the Jets and the Texans play last year to see who made it in to the playoffs. Of course, this would open up Pandora’s box when it comes to game planning and determining who plays who if you have a 4 or 5 way tie for a final playoff spot, but once again I would leave that up to the NFL brain trust to sort out. I’m just and ideas man who’s looking to break the bank with a crazy hair-brained scheme to strike it rich. Hell, anything is better than preseason…
Al fin de semana!
Keywords: Buffalo Bills, Chris Rock, Dallas Cowboys, Death at a Funeral, Houston Texans, Martin Lawrence, New York Jets, NFL, Tracy Morgan
