The No Defense League

It's been quite a while since I have posted, but a subject has arisen in recent days that I really felt strongly about, and I decided it was time to let my keyboard do the talking once again, and hopefully this will be the impetus I need to finally get back to regularly posting my thoughts on the world of sports to be read by the people out there in the internet world.

I have never been a huge fan of the NFL preseason, but I certainly do watch some games. I watch most of the Giants games, and I will try to catch some other games when I can, but preseason football is nowhere close to regular season football, and we have learned that preseason results have absolutely zero bearing on records once the real games actually kick off. However, this is not to say that 100% of the preseason is a complete waste of time.

Obviously for the starters, it is a chance to get in work in game situations, and develop a rapport with your new units. For the fringe players, the preseason is extremely important, as their performances decide whether or not they get a spot on any of the 32 NFL rosters. The league has also begun to use the preseason as a time to experiment with new rules changes. In 2014, extra points are now taken from 33 yards away, as opposed to 20 yards away. It is actually pretty strange to see, but once the regular season starts, the extra points will be taken from 20 yards away like we are so accustomed to seeing. While a bit odd, this is not really a big change. Yet, there is one change that will supposedly not be swept away once the regular season begins, and it is a change that I am not in favor of one bit.

NFL officials have been told by the league to put a much stronger emphasis on contact between defensive backs and wide receivers down the field, and the result has been an exponentially larger amount of penalty flags being thrown on down the field on passing plays. In the 2013 regular season, there was an average of 12.7 penalties called per game. That means each team committed around six penalties per game (bear in mind, this means accepted penalties, and does not factor in declined penalties). So far during this preseason, the average amount of penalties called per game is up to 23.7, which is just about double the number from last season. I can think of a plethora of reasons that this is bad for the game, and pretty much no reason that this is good for the game, and in no particular reason, I would like to address some of them.

Critics of baseball often times point to the length of the game. They say that football has surpassed baseball as our national pastime because baseball games simply take too long. Is that really true though? On average, we figure that a baseball game takes about three hours of real time to play. Is football really that different? No, it is not. There is a reason that we refer to "early" NFL games as ones that begin at 1:00, and "late" games as ones that begin at 4:00. However, that is technically not exactly accurate. The early games kick off at 1:05. Until recently, the late games kicked off at 4:15, but that was changed, and they now kick off at 4:25. The league executives in the NFL are certainly not fools, and they made that change for a reason. Games were taking longer than they used to take. Now, with double the amount of penalties being called, won't that only add on to that time? If the current trend of this preseason holds true, then it surely will not be long before those 4:25 start times turn into 4:35 start times. If that happens, then baseball games will look like sprints in comparisons to the marathons that are football games.
Since we are so enthralled with the NFL in this country though, could that not also be a good thing for the league? Longer games equates to longer hours of viewership. Does the NFL really need that though? On a normal Sunday during football season, I can watch purely football programming from 10 AM until around midnight. That is 14 hours of nothing but football. More than half of a calendar day. That is far longer than I could watch any other sport, and it isn't even a close margin of which sport would finish second. An increase in the amount of penalties called will make games drag on longer and longer, and there is only so long that I will take before I just want to tune out of a game.

Next, let's talk about the stop-and-go nature of football. Once again, we can compare it to baseball and see that it really isn't as different as we think. People complain about baseball because of the length of time between pitches. Batters step out of the box and continually adjust their equipment. Pitchers shake off signs and elicit visits to the mound from catchers and/or pitching coaches. Sometimes, the time between pitches seems to drag on and on. However, is football really too much different? If you factor in huddles, personnel changes, and adjustments at the line of scrimmage, the time between football plays is quite similar to the time between pitches in a Major League Baseball game. Factor in timeouts and far longer replay challenge times, and the NFL lags behind Major League Baseball. So are we really watching football games that move faster than baseball games? Quite simply, the answer is no.

While the problems I have discussed thus far are more concerned with off-field issues, now let's move to actual issues on the field. Over the last decade, the league has put an extremely strong emphasis upon the safety of players. No longer are defensive players like Mel Blount and Ronnie Lott allowed to blast ball carriers in any way they see fit. Because of a much higher awareness of the dangers of football, the league has come down hard on players hitting other players in the head and neck area now that we have seen how many former NFL players have to deal with medical issues long after their playing days are over. Even though it has taken away some of the aggression and belligerency of the game that is part of the reason we love it, I completely understand the reasoning of the league for doing so. Former NFL players are suffering severe mental and physical issues because of the hits they took as a player, and I certainly do not want to see the players I cheer for today end up not being able to remember their own names and walk around limping for the entirety of their lives like we see some former players do today. However, there is a line between protecting players and simply going over the top, and I think these new rules that the league is trying to enforce certainly qualify as over the top. It is one thing to be called for helmet to helmet collisions by a defensive player on an offensive player, but do we really need harmless (and often times unintended) bumps of offensive players down the field penalties? No. We don't.

The NFL has already (in my opinion) gone far past fairness in favoring offense over defense. Plays that used to be perfectly acceptable (and perfectly safe) have been called penalties in recent years, and what we are seeing this preseason is exponentially worse. It has come to the point that it is almost pointless to run the ball. Why run the ball when you could have a receiver run down the field, intentionally bump into a defensive back, and be rewarded with an illegal contact penalty and an automatic first down? While surely the running game is still important, all of these downfield penalties have made it less and less appealing to do anything but pass. When incidental contact between a receiver and defensive back not even involved in the play results in an automatic first down, who needs a running back? How about we just pass on every play and have the other team penalize itself all the way down the field? I understand that this is an "old-fashioned" point of view, but with the way that penalties have been called during this preseason, it is becoming closer and closer to a reality. I know that defensive battle that result in 10-6 games may not be as appealing to viewers as offensive shootouts, but do we really want to see teams just continually move down the field because of yellow flags? No.

As I stated before, I understand that this is just the preseason, and often times the preseason has no bearing on the regular season whatsoever. However, we know that 33 yard extra points will be gone once the regular season begins. We don't know if all of these penalties will be gone. Is it just a façade by the league to attempt to eliminate downfield contact, or is it what we are actually going to see once the games really count? With no disrespect meant to guys like Jeff Triplette, Ed Hochuli, and Mike Carey, who are great at what they do, the overwhelming majority of football fans do not tune in to games to see the officials. We tune in to games to see the players. Therefore, I just hope that all of these penalties we are seeing is just an anomaly, and come September 4th when the Seahawks begin defense of their championship, we get to watch the players, and only get a sparse showing of the officials, as opposed to being overwhelmed by yellow flags and penalties that make our favorite sport less enjoyable.

Daily Giants Update: I was not impressed by the showing of the Giants in their last preseason game against the Colts. The defense looked pretty good at times, but the offense was terrible. The offensive line was mediocre at best, and the passing game was very poor. Despite a 3-0 record in the preseason, I have seen far more negative than positive from the players who will actually be on the field once the regular season gets underway. Week 3 of the preseason is usually the dress rehearsal for the regular season, so on Friday we will get a real extended look at the starting units. If the defense can continue to improve, I think it could be pretty good. However, the offense has shown me very little to believe that it will be successful once the games count.

Daily Diamondbacks Update: It has been a very bad season for the DBacks in 2014, as they now sit at 19 games under .500. A few positives have come about recently, but the season was really over before it started with the horrible start the team got off to. David Peralta and Ender Inciarte have been impressive, and it has been nice to see Miguel Montero bounce back from a down year in 2013. Aside from that, Patrick Corbin was done before the season even began and Paul Goldschmidt won't see the field for the rest of the season. Didi Gregorius has proven that he deserves a spot somewhere in our infield, and Chase Anderson seems like he will be a capable mid-to-late rotation starter. Aside from that, I honestly think nothing will get better until General Manager Kevin Towers is shown the door. First pitch tonight is in an hour and a half. The bad times make the good times feel even better, and as of today, we are surely mired in the bad times. However, my support is with the team 100% because that is what real fans do.