by Steve Shoup
What Does Preseason Mean?
August 22, 2010 in Uncategorized by Steve Shoup
By Guest Blogger Megan Shoup:
The big debate…how much do Preseason games really mean? What are they worth or show or prove? To me, and many other football fans, not much. You don’t hold too much stock in preseason games or atleast the outcome. But are the certain aspects that are worthwhile and give us as fans a sense of where are team is at? In that case, yes.
The reason I write about this is because its frustrating for me as a Redskins fan, when last week we dominated the Buffalo Bills and looked amazing in every aspect of the game. And this week against the Ravens, not so much! But what’s frustrating is last week when I was excited, people were saying, “Its just preseason, it doesn’t mean anything.” Whereas this week, I’ve already heard after the loss and poor performance, “See, the Redskins still suck or they look awful”. Yes, they didn’t play well, but shouldn’t both games be “judged” the same? If we’re going to be critical of the Redskins this week, then they should atleast get their credit for last week good performance. Bottom line, I think the difference was playing the Bills and the Ravens…big difference. But in both games they made some mistakes (more this week) and in both games the Redskins showed a lot of good things and promise…so that’s what I’ll take out of the first two Redskins preseason games.
Now back to the point…Here are my top 3 reasons why Preseason games have meaning and don’t have meaning…
3 Reasons Why Preseason Games Are Important:
-You get to see where your starters are at working together, with the playbook, etc. How comfortable are they as a team?
-You get to root for young rookies to make the team that could be a difference maker (Brandon Banks).
-You get the bugs and kinks worked out.
3 Reasons Why Preseason Games Don’t Mean Anything:
-Certainly shouldn’t worry about the outcome, because a lot of the players playing in the second half will be coaching football soon, not playing football in the NFL. It’s not your true team.
-Teams and coaches don’t gameplan, scheme, etc. as they would for a regular season game. From what I hear, most teams keep it “Vanilla”.
-Your starters may not even be playing with the same intensity level to avoid injury.
So this leads me to the final question…
Is 4 Preseason games too much? That’s a lot of games to avoid injury and be playing “vanilla”. In my personal opinion, I’d love if the NFL went to 2 preseason games and 18 regular season games! What’s your thoughts?
I’m all for cutting the pre-season down to two games but I think an 18 game regular season is too long. Players wear down at the end of the season and with two more games that’s likely going to lead to some late season injuries. I don’t necessarily want to see playoff games with a bunch of backups playing. I think the economics makes this a difficult issue. The players will want more money to play two more real games. The owners really won’t benefit unless they raise ticket prices because right now they charge the same for pre-season and regular season games. So presuming that they would have one extra regular season home game and one of the two pre-season games was at home, they would still only be getting a total of 10 home games. They might sell a few more concessions with a bigger crowd at the one extra regular season home game and the TV revenue might be bigger, but I question if that would make up the difference in the increased payroll. Back when the NFL season was 12 games long, teams would play SIX pre-season games – the owners wanted the revenue. It always comes down to the economics and for that reason I think we will be stuck with the current scenario for a while. Sigh!!
Good point! You’re right…it always comes down to economics! Its a game but unfortunately its also a big business. So we probably will be stuck with this scenario…you know me…I’m too impatient! I’m already over preseason and anxious for the regular season to start!