The first week of the NFL Preseason is wrapping up and despite all of the yearning for real football that led up to it, the NFL Preseason never fails to disappoint. There are lukewarm defenses covering milquetoast offenses and half of the players in the game will not see the final 53-man roster, less yet the field when the games start to count. Rookies that teams are clamoring to see can often misguide expectations for the regular season with their play in the preseason. The teams themselves also don’t value the NFL Preseason as much as joint practices.
As the NFL moves toward adding an 18th game to the regular season, it is time to have a real discussion about the lead up to it. There are many different options for the NFL to try with its preseason but something is clear and it’s that the current status quo is not going to translate to the 18-game format. If the NFL wants to maximize its possibilities with its preseason and who are we kidding, the NFL maxes out everything, they are going to have to change it up. What should they do?
NFL Preseason Landscape
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The NFL has pretty consistently played 20 games in a year since the AFL/NFL merger. As time has gone on, there has been a shift from 14 regular season games and six preseason games to 16 and four, to now 17 and three. The number of games isn’t the only thing that has changed about the NFL Preseason. The way coaches, players, and fans treat the preseason has undergone significant upheaval as well, making it a vastly different thing today than in the past.
As fans and media have put more emphasis and pay more attention to the NFL Preseason, people inside the NFL have gone in the other direction. Coaches and players have devalued the preseason for their own reasons. Prominent players are more willing to sit out some, if not all of the preseason, and prolong contract disputes right up until the regular season. Coaches show less and less of their plays, schemes, and tendencies during preseason action. In recent years coaches have saved most of their work for team scrimmages.
The instability of the NFL Preseason product has affected the action that unfolds on the field as well. Performances are not as reliable and transferrable to the regular season. There have been examples of prominent players making their bones in the preseason before becoming great in the regular season like Dak Prescott in 2016. The preseason is vital for the fringe players to show their team’s front office that they should be on the roster. In the case of top rookies looking to give fans a preview of what’s to come, they are very unpredictable.
Preseason Performances From the Past and Present
Just one season ago, the NFL Preseason gave fans the impression that Bryce Young was worthy of the first overall pick and that the Houston Texans were misguided in their selection of CJ Stroud. Today that seems ridiculous, but if you were to base your projections on their preseason performances, it wouldn’t be as jarring. This year the first overall pick is again shining in the preseason.
Caleb Williams is helping the hype train run smoothly in Chicago with his preseason outing against the Buffalo Bills. Williams might well be all that he is cracked up to be, but you won’t be pointing towards the NFL Preseason to explain why he is successful or when you knew he was destined for great things. Even coaches on his team may say that in the weeks leading up to his first start, it was controlled scrimmages that gave them the most confidence in their rookie starting quarterback.
Where The League Goes From Here
The action on the field will no doubt entice some fans to think that they hit or missed on their first pick, make them fall in love with a fringe player trying to make the roster or get them excited about a late-round pick flashing during the NFL Preseason. Once week 1 comes around, all of the attention will go toward the games that count. This happens every year like clockwork and it will happen again in 2024. What the NFL has to do is look forward to 2025 and beyond when they hope the regular season will be 18 games, rather than the 17 currently in place.
When this comes to pass the likely idea for the NFL is to do what they have always done and keep the formula at 20 total games between the preseason and regular season. They might want to reconsider this idea. With the influence of controlled scrimmages and the changing perceptions throughout the league of the preseason games, there could be better ways of adapting to an 18-game season.
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