Is the quality of the sport at an all-time low

Jetstream Green

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I am not talking about entertainment but the sport itself. Across the board, this is some of the sloppiest football I can ever remember seeing. Be it the fluidity of free agency, the trades, manipulative salary cap, the nuances of new rules to favor the offense, the ambiguous new rules for player protection while guys seem to be getting hurt more often, the limitations on padded practices, and the now grueling 17 game season with a lack of preseason preparation. It seems the NFL has finally gained its much-desired parity through mediocrity while ironically the players themselves might be the most athletically gifted the league has ever known
 
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Jetstream Green

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There is a lack of consistency. I think K9 was spot on when instead of stating some teams are good or bad, they fail direct classification, and you have a bunch of good bad teams and a bunch of bad good teams
 

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I guess it depends what you mean by quality.

Football, like all sports, is an entertainment product and from an entertainment perspective I think it's at it's peak. There are great QB's, highlight reels of plays every week, everyone can beat everyone to some degree. There are surprise results all the time. Super Bowl winners are tough to predict. There are no more dominant teams like the Pats were recently.

But if you were raised on 70's and 80's football it's a very different game in many respects and I can see how purists might consider it lessened somehow.
 

DaHilg

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I think it more so has to do with nearly every defense playing 2 high safeties.. basically forcing teams to dink and dunk between the 20’s. Less big plays, less scoring… has resulted in the product on the field not being as exciting imo. I think I saw through week 6 that scoring was its lowest in ~10 years. NFL can’t be too happy w that.
 

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I think it more so has to do with nearly every defense playing 2 high safeties.. basically forcing teams to dink and dunk between the 20’s. Less big plays, less scoring… has resulted in the product on the field not being as exciting imo. I think I saw through week 6 that scoring was its lowest in ~10 years. NFL can’t be too happy w that.
Good perspective
 
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Jetstream Green

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I guess it depends what you mean by quality.

Football, like all sports, is an entertainment product and from an entertainment perspective I think it's at it's peak. There are great QB's, highlight reels of plays every week, everyone can beat everyone to some degree. There are surprise results all the time. Super Bowl winners are tough to predict. There are no more dominant teams like the Pats were recently.

But if you were raised on 70's and 80's football it's a very different game in many respects and I can see how purists might consider it lessened somehow.
Which is why I began, "I am not talking about entertainment but the sport itself"
 

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Which is why I began, "I am not talking about entertainment but the sport itself"

Which is why I said sport is entertainment. You can't separate the two.

I think I'd rather watch football today than at any other time if that helps answer the question.
 

slanidrac16

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I think the game has become over saturated. To many games on Thursday ‘s and early morning Sunday games on the other side of the world that have bad match ups and has interest for only the fan base of two teams.
Athletes are bigger and faster playing more games which have lead to more injuries which leads to more bench players playing.
 

Proximo

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I am not talking about entertainment but the sport itself. Across the board, this is some of the sloppiest football I can ever remember seeing. Be it the fluidity of free agency, the trades, manipulative salary cap, the nuances of new rules to favor the offense, the ambiguous new rules for player protection while guys seem to be getting hurt more often, the limitations on padded practices, and the now grueling 17 game season with a lack of preseason preparation. It seems the NFL has finally gained its much-desired parity through mediocrity while ironically the players themselves might be the most athletically gifted the league has ever known
I don't think so. I think we are just in a phase where defenses have moved ahead in the chess game temporarily.

Offenses will figure it out soon enough, probably by going more run heavy.
 

kerouac9

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I don't think the quality of the sport is at an all-time low. Blake Bortles and Ryan Fitzpatrick started entire seasons for teams in 2015. The quarterback position might be at an all-time peak right now.

I agree with what everyone is saying that there's just an imbalance between (most) defenses and (most) offenses in the NFL. The solution is probably more and better running, but a lot of teams are going to have to tool up for that, because franchises like ours have been playing catchup at QB and are now over-leveraged there.
 
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