Slowwww Down

Week 2, 3 and 4 results are in:

Week 2: z –4  B-6   S-8

Sal came back with a vengeance.  He slammed me with a steel chair, shoved a few $100 bills in my unconscious mouth and stole the belt. 

Week 3: z –2  B-9  S-8

Billy Ice comes off the top rope and takes the title back.

Week 4: z–5  B-7  S-7

Sal built an early lead, but Bill completes a wild comeback with the prime time sweep and ekes out the tie to retain the belt.  Sal starts a scuffle in the post-match press conference and is held back by a half dozen officials while screaming for a rematch.  Week 5 promises to bring fireworks but for now let’s talk a little more about the state of the league.

Can we slow down on the NFL-is-in-decline-let’s-knit-pick-every-little-incomplete-pass-and-overcriticize-it movement?  Take week 2, Thursday night: Houston at Cincinnati.  The consensus reaction was predictable:

That game was unwatchable.  The NFL is going downhill.  Why should we watch these crappy teams?

To my point from before, what are we really looking for here? The league’s current CBA took steps to improve player safety by reducing practice time and trimming down the offseason, and it has led to some rusty play early in the year.  You could argue some of the rules need tweaked to try to tighten it up a little, but the season ebbs and flows.  It’s fine.  We’re starting to get a little too needy.  If a game isn’t a 35-28 shootout with 75%+ completion percentages on both sides of the ball, it’s bad football.   Don’t like it?  Fine.  Go watch Robin Lopez fire up 3’s over the outstretched arms of Greg Monroe for six months of meaningless games.  I’ll be enjoying Geno Atkins rip through two o-lineman before smashing into Deshaun Watson sending him flying back 10 yards or watching Watson scramble around and slither 70 yards down the field for a touchdown.

Crow about the exciting talent in the NBA all you want.  Even if the NFL regular season play has dipped, it is still 7000 times better than the regular season abominations in the NBA, MLB, and NHL. The league isn’t perfect by any means but until the other leagues cut their season’s at least in half to get into even the same stratosphere of regular season watch-ability maybe we should stop shoveling dirt on the NFL and keep the criticism in perspective. 

This isn’t directed at you personally.  It is a trend throughout sports media.  More people than ever are analyzing and reacting to sports news and everyone is equipped with a giant magnifying glass. The NFL regular season structure (compact slate of games crammed into four months where we can catch a quick breath each week and then drink information from the fire hose again each Sunday) has long been one of its greatest assets.  The stage is set for people to watch each week.  The season flow’s nicer. There’s more suspense.  It makes gambling and fantasy easier (two industries that drive popularity way more than anyone is willing to admit).

 

Now, in the era of sensory-overload coverage and analysis, the NFL trots out their offering each Sunday and the glare focuses so intensely on the league, eventually it starts to smolder.  Other pro sports leagues continue to flood the market with mediocre product spread out so far that the light never really shines in one spot for very long, and the same criticism isn’t looming in the air. 

Strangely, the NFL’s regular season format is almost turning into its Achilles heel.  Almost.  Almost because have things really changed that much or have we just changed the way we look at sports?  The NFL season still makes for better theater.  It’s still easier to digest weekly.  We’re just asking more of it now than we used to and we’re not demanding the same standards from baseball, basketball, and hockey.  

Yes, some improvements are needed, but instead of just deciding it’s broken let’s take a step back and enjoy what we have while we have it.  As always long live Bill Simmons.

-a fan