What Does Preseason Mean?

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?