Is the NFL Entering a New Era of Suckitude?

By Brett | Permalink | 1 comment | October 12th, 2006 | Trackback

We have a very short commute to work. Walkable, in fact. When we’re too lazy to walk, which is about four days a week, we often find ourselves getting caught listening to the Herd on ESPN Radio in the car for a few minutes. This morning, we listened as Colin Cowherd ranted about how the NFL is starting to come down from it’s perch as the dominant sports league in the US, at least in terms of quality of product, if not marketability.

Cowherd’s main point was that the NFL is all about QBs, and right now there are very few marquee QBs in the league. Most teams, he claims, are content to have the dreaded ‘game manager’ at QB (we’re looking at you, Minnesota). We find ourselves agreeing with this point, to an extent. We’ll expand on this in a post to be named later.

But first, the larger question at hand: Does the quality of play in the NFL generally suck ass right now?

Well, like most important solving-world-hunger type questions, it depends on how you look at it, but from our perspective the answer is a resounding yes. Here’s why:

1. As we mentioned a couple days, the days of parity in the NFL where upsets were commonplace and any team could beat any other team on –all together now– Any Given Sunday, appear to be a thing of the past. At least for a year. Yeah, there’s still a little bit of that going on. Witness Washington beating Jacksonville in OT two weeks, and then getting spanked by the Giants a week later. That could have more to do with the Skins being an inconsistent team than anything else, though. Sure, upsets are still going to happen from time to time, but through five weeks, we’ve seen a lot of bad teams consistently sucking and a lot of good teams playing consistently well.

2. The bottom third of the league is absolutely hideous this year. Last year, there were two truly awful teams — San Francisco and Houston (we’re giving New Orleans a free pass here due to the whole Katrina/Aaron Brooks/Jim Haslett thing). This year, there are at least five horrible teams — Oakland, Detroit, Green Bay, Houston, and Tennessee. Everyone talks about the possibility of Oakland going 0-16, and how amazing that would be. Can you honestly envision Detroit or Tennessee winning a game right now either? Forget one team going 0-16….we might very well end up with three on our hands, when it’s all said and done.

In addition to those five teams, there are another five –Tampa Bay, Miami, San Francisco (moving up in the world at least), Cleveland, and Arizona– that have been almost just as bad as the bottomfeeders. That means that on any given weekend of play, there are at least 10 teams –a third of the league– that the average, no-rooting-interest NFL fan is just not going to be that interested in watching, even if there are fantasy implications on the line. For example, we had Frank Gore going in last weekend SF vs. Oakland. Great fantasy match up, but do really think we’re gonna sit through that abortion of a game? Hell no.

3. Looking at the middle tier of the league –Kansas City, St. Louis, Dallas, Jacksonville, etc.– you’ve got some teams that are going to win some games, and probably go to the playoffs. But none of these teams are that 8-8 or 9-7 team that none of the contenders want to have to face in the first weekend in January. They’re all paper tigers, each with at least one serious flaw. Plus, every single one of these teams has been God awful to watch this year.

4. There are really only a handful of teams that have actually been enjoyable to watch this year — Chicago, Indy, San Diego, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Carolina (with Steve Smith in the line up). Even some of the best teams in the league right now, such as Baltimore, Denver, and Seattle have been pretty dull to watch for the most part. Hell, even New England has been pretty blah, with the exception of the 38-13 beatdown they put on Cincy.

In our opinion, about one quarter of the teams in the NFL are worth watching right now. Of course, the three teams that haven’t won a game yet are also kinda fun to watch, in a treck wreck sort of way. Overall, though, the quality of play does appear to be down this year, which has been more than a bit disappointing.

Figures that the Bears would finally start playing well when the rest of the league sucks.

Home » NFL News