The NFL's Boring Product

[Turf]

Wow. Watching the evening games is dreadful. Watching any game other than your team is dreadful. If not for fantasy football, would the NFL have half the viewership it has?
Games like 6-6. 3-3 in the 4th quarter. Dink and dink league, Dink and dunk. 5 yard pass. Is this basketball? Boring boring boring boring.
In a league where they adjusted the rules to elicit scoring, just the opposite is happening. Why is that?

1) The rosters are too small - Injuries, depth. I guess the NFL really is all about money. God forbid the extra 5 million a team would have to pay out to have some depth and consistency, not to mention identity.

2) The games are too short. No, not the game length itself, the number of plays taken out of the game via play clock, no out of bounds stoppages unless under 5 mins each half. I've even seen the clock running after penalites. Why? More commercials!
They complained the games were too long (like there's anything else better on TV Sunday than football).

I'm going to beat this drum until someone listens to me. Due to the lack of plays in the game and the game clock, you cannot get back into a game when behind by running. So you have to throw. Everyone sits deep so you can't beat them and what do you have. Dink and dunk 5 yard passes. It's BORING. It's not football.

3) Hyper sensitive pass interference (and holding). Makes it easy to fix a game.

4) Commercials - nothing needs to be said its soo bad.

5) Replays - nothing needs to be said its soo bad.

6) Politics - I watch football for an escape and because I love the game itself, not to discuss someone's emotional crisis or political view.

7) The No Fun League - You can cripple another player, but apparently celebrating victory is a no no. I actually like that stuff. Or should I say LIKED.

Feel free to add to the list. I'm really hating seeing my game dismantled by Goodell and the supporting cast.

[Crisis]

Funny you compare it to basketball, when the NBA is actually on the rise because they avoid the negativity that surrounds the NFL.

Turn on a sports station during last year and it's NBA talk, what do they talk about? The focus is on the players and player narratives. Curry and the Warrios, Russ and the Thunder, Lebron, etc.

Turn on a sports station and its NFL talk, what do you hear? Kaepernick, excessive celebration penalties, bogus disciplinary action by the league, concussions, how awful the officiating is. It's night and day, the focus isn't about the actual game anymore.

Not even mentioning you suck the joy out of the game when everytime a big play is made you're looking for a flag or worried about some bogus penalty to wipe it out, and then have to sit through a ridiculous amount of commercials directly after. How am I supposed to be hyped about a TD when I spend a minute waiting for the flag to come out and waiting for an excessive celebration penalty, then 5+ minutes on commercials, watch a touchback, and get another 2-5 minutes of commercials?

[Turf]

Funny you compare it to basketball, when the NBA is actually on the rise because they avoid the negativity that surrounds the NFL.

Turn on a sports station during last year and it's NBA talk, what do they talk about? The focus is on the players and player narratives. Curry and the Warrios, Russ and the Thunder, Lebron, etc.

Turn on a sports station and its NFL talk, what do you hear? Kaepernick, excessive celebration penalties, bogus disciplinary action by the league, concussions, how awful the officiating is. It's night and day, the focus isn't about the actual game anymore.

Not even mentioning you suck the joy out of the game when everytime a big play is made you're looking for a flag or worried about some bogus penalty to wipe it out, and then have to sit through a ridiculous amount of commercials directly after. How am I supposed to be hyped about a TD when I spend a minute waiting for the flag to come out and waiting for an excessive celebration penalty, then 5+ minutes on commercials, watch a touchback, and get another 2-5 minutes of commercials?

You are very correct.

[Topas]

Wow. Watching the evening games is dreadful. Watching any game other than your team is dreadful. If not for fantasy football, would the NFL have half the viewership it has?
Games like 6-6. 3-3 in the 4th quarter. Dink and dink league, Dink and dunk. 5 yard pass. Is this basketball? Boring boring boring boring.
In a league where they adjusted the rules to elicit scoring, just the opposite is happening. Why is that?

1) The rosters are too small - Injuries, depth. I guess the NFL really is all about money. God forbid the extra 5 million a team would have to pay out to have some depth and consistency, not to mention identity.

2) The games are too short. No, not the game length itself, the number of plays taken out of the game via play clock, no out of bounds stoppages unless under 5 mins each half. I've even seen the clock running after penalites. Why? More commercials!
They complained the games were too long (like there's anything else better on TV Sunday than football).

I'm going to beat this drum until someone listens to me. Due to the lack of plays in the game and the game clock, you cannot get back into a game when behind by running. So you have to throw. Everyone sits deep so you can't beat them and what do you have. Dink and dunk 5 yard passes. It's BORING. It's not football.

3) Hyper sensitive pass interference (and holding). Makes it easy to fix a game.

4) Commercials - nothing needs to be said its soo bad.

5) Replays - nothing needs to be said its soo bad.

6) Politics - I watch football for an escape and because I love the game itself, not to discuss someone's emotional crisis or political view.

7) The No Fun League - You can cripple another player, but apparently celebrating victory is a no no. I actually like that stuff. Or should I say LIKED.

Feel free to add to the list. I'm really hating seeing my game dismantled by Goodell and the supporting cast.

ad 1) One of the reasons that rosters are so small is, that well-run teams (aka Patriots, Steelers etc.) cannot hide all the good players on their rosters on the bench and develp them. In that way bad teams (aka the Bills) have access to these players. So small rosters do also in a way improve the product on the field. Of course money is also a reason. I am just saying that bigger teams would not necessarily increase the quality of play.

ad 2) 3h is plenty enough for me. Of course it would be nice with less ads. But that is a pipedream.

ad 3) I like hypersensitive pass interference. Better than when the Patriots players mugged the Colts on each pass route and there was no passing game.

ad 7) I wholeheartely agree here.

[Ingtar33]

Funny you compare it to basketball, when the NBA is actually on the rise because they avoid the negativity that surrounds the NFL.

Turn on a sports station during last year and it's NBA talk, what do they talk about? The focus is on the players and player narratives. Curry and the Warrios, Russ and the Thunder, Lebron, etc.

Turn on a sports station and its NFL talk, what do you hear? Kaepernick, excessive celebration penalties, bogus disciplinary action by the league, concussions, how awful the officiating is. It's night and day, the focus isn't about the actual game anymore.

Not even mentioning you suck the joy out of the game when everytime a big play is made you're looking for a flag or worried about some bogus penalty to wipe it out, and then have to sit through a ridiculous amount of commercials directly after. How am I supposed to be hyped about a TD when I spend a minute waiting for the flag to come out and waiting for an excessive celebration penalty, then 5+ minutes on commercials, watch a touchback, and get another 2-5 minutes of commercials?

agreed, the NBA has been fun to watch. I've never been much of a NBA fan, mostly watched college basket ball, I would watch the finals from time to time as well. But the last few years have been a blast. First it was the spurs with that finals against the heat. That had to have been the best exhibition of basketball I've ever seen. Then it was the Warriors rolling the Cavs, heck while the Cavs weren't that fun of a team to watch, the ball never really moved well with them, and when it hit Irving's hands it would die, the ball LBJ played in those last 3 games of the finals was out of this world elite. That was a return to the pre-miami Lebron, that was a lot of fun to watch.

Best thing to happen to the NBA was the spurs winning it a few years ago. got a lot of teams rolling with a motion offense, passing, and finding the open man, and away from ISO ball. ISO ball was killing the league. I couldn't watch it. Just painful. now the league is a lot of fun to watch.

The NFL on the other hand has a problem with teams trying to incorporate the college spread/option offenses, and NFL defenses generally able to shut it down. The teams that are really dominating on offence are the teams running 30 year old nfl offenses, 2RBs, 1TE, lots of motion, plenty of pulling guards, they look like the old school redskins or even the 90's cowboys. Most defenses have got away from big linebackers, and linemen in order to pass rush effectively against those short passing game spread offenses, so of course the teams seriously dedicated to the rushing game are carving up those undersized front sevens.

[Skooby]

The whole look at me social event has really soured me on watching other NFL games besides Buffalo.

[swiper]

Basketball is not a contact sport.

In professional football, the players have gotten bigger, faster, stronger and are hitting each other much harder than ever. I laugh now thinking about Joe DeLamellieure, Mike Montler, Reggie McKenzie, Donnie Green, and Dave Foley (the Elecctric Company). They would never play in the league today. Concussions on the rise. Public watching how the league handles it. Just saying.

But the problem is there are not too many marquee players. No Deon Sanders, Bill Romanowski, Ronnie Lott, etc. Not enough anyway. The league lacks star QBs (due to college football changes) and running backs. The whole game has progressed in to a fancy version of the arena football league where scoring can be 50 to 70 points per game. They claim the fans like to see scoring. Well there's that.

But the died-in-the-wool guys that like to watch the grind it out game are bucking back...

Ratings still shrinking

Ratings are down, every week in nearly every broadcasting window.

For Week Seven, the 9.4 overnight rating for the Bears-Packers game reflected an 18.2-percent drop from the Week Seven TNF game in 2015, a 20-3 win by the Seahawks over the 49ers. The Sunday night game between the Seahawks and Cardinals dropped by 15 percent from last year’s Eagles-Panthers game, with an 11.6 rating.

[swiper]

The whole look at me social event has really soured me on watching other NFL games besides Buffalo.

I find myself watching non-Bills games less and less. Almost never anymore. Nothing there interests me. I watched the end of the Charger/Falcon game. That was pretty good, but these teams are going where? IDK.

We'll never see Raiders/Steelers, Cowboys/Redskins or Rams/Vikings again. Those rivalries died with the 1970s.

[YardRat]

I don't think the rosters are too small.

[Historian]

Random thoughts:

The graduation rate of college athletes coming out for the draft is pathetic. I think the system is a complete mess.

I'm beginning to think the reason for replay is to squeeze in another three commercials. Even when you're at a game, the times the players are just standing around waiting for the commercials to play is silly.

It's become more of a pageant, or fashion show, as opposed to a sporting event.

Armed guards with M-16s patrolling the gates.

This is my last year as a STH, and it has nothing to do with the team's play on the field.

Gameday isn't even fun anymore.

[Ingtar33]

In professional football, the players have gotten bigger, faster, stronger and are hitting each other much harder than ever. I laugh now thinking about Joe DeLamellieure, Mike Montler, Reggie McKenzie, Donnie Green, and Dave Foley (the Elecctric Company). They would never play in the league today. Concussions on the rise. Public watching how the league handles it. Just saying.

But the problem is there are not too many marquee players. No Deon Sanders, Bill Romanowski, Ronnie Lott, etc. Not enough anyway. The league lacks star QBs (due to college football changes) and running backs. The whole game has progressed in to a fancy version of the arena football league where scoring can be 50 to 70 points per game. They claim the fans like to see scoring. Well there's that.

scoring is WAY down so your point is invalid. WAY DOWN. The problem is teams can't score anymore. 3-3- is becoming the norm not 50-40.

Your first point about concussions though? That's part of the reason why no one is watching. Not because of the concussions, or concern for the players, but because the actions the league has taken to limit concussions have turned off the fans to a high degree. Ronnie Lott would never have made a name for himself in today's nfl. Today's nfl would have banned him the first time he took someone's head off after going over the middle.

AND that, i think is ultimately where the NFL lost the fans. Like it or hate it, the NFL was popular because it was a gladiator sport. Take away player injury by legislating where they can hit each other excessively and you take the gladiator out of it. It simply won't be interesting to the people who like football for the huge hits.

[k-oneputt]

I've had season tickets for years, and I'm seriously thinking this is my last year.
I will cherry pick the couple of games I really want.
NFL, outside of the Bills, has become boring to me. I can't even watch a whole game unless I have big action on it.

[BuffRanger]

Refs waaaaaay too involved. Too many penalties. Too many stoppages. Everytime a big play happens i wait to react, knowing a flag has been thrown that will take it away. It's the refs.

[kscdogbillsfan1221]

For me, the single biggest turnoff are the commercials. injury. commercial. touchdown. commercial. extra point. commercial. kickoff. commercial. just takes away from the flow of the game from my perspective

[stuckincincy]

Let's remember this thread the next time new stadium talk comes up.

[WagonCircler]

This is going send Millennials running for their safe spaces.

The ratings are down because the NFL has an NBA problem.

But everyone's afraid to say it.

Ever notice how boxing gave way to MMA?

Why do you suppose MLB is so much more popular with Latinos than African Americans?

Why are NHL fans 99% caucasian?

This is a quote from Charles Barkley: "White folks are not going to come to see a bunch of guys with tattoos, with cornrows. I'm sorry, but anyone who thinks different, they're stupid."

Do the math. It's not politically correct, but it's undeniable. It's a combination of human nature and demographic math.

In a vacuum, Kaeprnick's nonsense would have been a blip, but in the racially charged atmosphere cultivated by the let for purely political purposes, it has served as an accelerant. And watching Goodell lie down has sent many people to the exits.

[PuntKicker]

Lol, what? And not just at that last post but at the whole thread. The NFL MINTS MONEY. When that no longer is the case, I'll be able to read this nonsense with a straight face.

[Mr. Pink]

This thread only exists because the home town team has been irrelevant for almost 2 decades now.

Do you think people in Boston or NYC or Dallas or Pittsburgh or Wisconsin feel this way?

The only real problem is the absurd amount of commercials that seems to completely eliminate any flow for the game. However, when you're getting big money from the networks these things happen.



The flags aren't a big deal to me, I don't watch games and see a big play and automatically think a flag is going to come out because 9 times out of 10 it doesn't.

[Mr. Pink]

And now a point vs point argument...

1. Rosters aren't too small, rosters are too big. It's why you see guys like Justin Hunter, Greg Lewis just as examples getting chance after chance even though if they played 30 years ago they'd be out of the game by now. Too many teams, too many roster spaces = way too much dilution of talent. So the teams who have that stud at QB who can get it done regardless of the interchangeable parts around him are good year in and year out. There is no parity in the league at the top, there's plenty of parity in the middle though as you have a handful of dominant teams and a handful of just god awful franchises...then there's a clusterf of mediocrity in between.

2. Games are not too short. http://www.oregonlive.com/nfl/index....nger_than.html Year by year with all the stoppages that interrupt game flow as I detailed in my above post make the games last even longer and this just grows every year. Another fun article...http://qz.com/150577/an-average-nfl-...nutes-of-play/

3. Hyper sensitive PI? PI now is very rarely called. It ends up being illegal contacting or holding. Are these penalties called more times than they were in the past? Well yeah because the rules have been opened up to allow for passing offenses to succeed. If today's defensive rules existed 20-30 years ago guys like Steve Atwater, Ronnie Lott and Eric Turner would have been thrown out of the league. So it all comes down to if you'd rather watch those type of players clutching, grabbing and laying out receivers OR if you'd rather see Goodwin catch that 50+ yard TD we saw Sunday. I can guarantee that play doesn't happen in the 90s NFL as Goodwin would likely not be in the NFL as he'd have issues ever getting separation from anyone with how hard he'd be jammed and grabbed.

4 and 5 I don't disagree with. I think the NFL should go back to no instant replay at all, the calls missed? The calls missed. It happens. Refs are human and everyone makes mistakes. Plus, again, it runs the flow of the game. You get into the game and see the play and think he totally got his feet down in bounds, they show the replay on TV or the jumbotron and it's plan as day. Next thing you know it's going up to the booth for 3 minutes to figure out something that should take 3 seconds.

6. Is a total nonpoint. Don't want to hear political stuff attached? Don't listen when they talk about players kneeling. Of course everyone loved the political angle and agenda during SB XXV didn't they?

7. The No Fun League has existed for around 30 years now...this isn't new nor anything to complain about in today's game.

[IlluminatusUIUC]

I'm laughing at the idea that the NBA is putting on a better product. Yeah, if you are a fan of one of the 4-5 stacked super teams. When futures betting opened, the Warriors were - 150 to win the championship, whereas you could get the ENTIRE FIELD at +120.

To adapt Mr. Pink's point, if Buffalo had an nba franchise it would be a disaster. Small market basketball teams are frequently losing talent to bigger media markets. Cleveland only managed to put together a title team because one of the best players of all time was born in their backyard and made it his personal mission. Then you have teams that have been intentionally tanking for close to 5 seasons.