The Death of the NFL?
This was the latest cover posted by Sports Illustrated earlier today... A picture is worth a thousand words, and this picture could almost give you a thousand names of injured NFL players... Now, injuries aren't the only reason the league is collapsing (we'll get into the other reasons as well) but these injuries are going a longggg way in leading to the tail spinning league that is the NFL...
It's sad but sometimes the truth hurts and it's time we look at it...
Deshaun Watson, Carson Wentz, Andrew Luck, Carson Palmer, Aaron Rodgers, David Johnson, Dalvin Cook, Chris Thompson, D'onta Foreman, Darren Sproles, John Kuhn, Odell Beckham Jr, Julian Edelman, Brandon Marshall, Terrelle Pryor Sr, Martellus Bennett, Tyler Eifert, Joe Thomas, Jason Peters, Andrew Whitworth, Mike Remmers, Riley Reiff, DJ Humphries, Mike Iupati, TJ Lang...
One the defensive side, we've lost...
JJ Watt, John Simon, Whitney Mercilus, Markus Golden, Alex Okafor, Cliff Avril, Leonard Floyd, Jerrell Freeman, Jamie Collins Sr, Jordan Hicks, Vontaze Burfict, Zach Brown, Thomas Davis, Eric Berry, Kam Chancellor, Richard Sherman, Patrick Peterson, Jason Verrett, and the horrifying injury of Ryan Shazier's back/spine which we're still waiting to hear more details on....
The one trend I'm really starting to notice in football? That the most exciting player to watch are the ones that are the most explosive off the ball. They are the players that awe and amaze us with their speed, strength, and athleticism...
But being that quick and explosive comes at a price in this sport. Being that quick and that strong is like runaway trains hitting each other multiple times a game and eventually one slip or one hit is just too much for their body to handle.
And a lot of the injuries we see are so severe that either the player will never return to the caliber he could play at before, the injury will be a problem later in their life, or both...
After all of these injuries, we're stuck watching second and third strings like Blaine Gabbert and Joe Webb duking it out which has just been ridiculous in my mind. We have to watch the players that can't quite make the exciting play...
But being that quick and explosive comes at a price in this sport. Being that quick and that strong is like runaway trains hitting each other multiple times a game and eventually one slip or one hit is just too much for their body to handle. And a lot of the injuries we see are so severe that either the player will never return to the caliber he could play at before, the injury will be a problem later in their life, or both...
After all of these injuries, we're stuck watching second and third strings like Blaine Gabbert and Joe Webb duking it out which has just been ridiculous in my mind. We have to watch the players that can't quite make the exciting play...
Would you rather watch Dalvin Cook or Latavius Murray?
Aaron Rodgers or Brett Hundley?
Deshaun Watson or Tom Savage? (Oh wait it's TJ Yates now...)
Aaron Rodgers or Brett Hundley?
Deshaun Watson or Tom Savage? (Oh wait it's TJ Yates now...)
Speaking of Tom Savage, here's a video from their Week 14 match up against the San Francisco 49ers... Savage gets hit as he throws and appears to start to shake like he is having a seizure... Tom Savage WOULD STAY IN THE GAME for the Texans' next series... I strongly suggest you take a second to watch this video before we continue on...
Tom Savage Hit vs. 49ers
The truth is that injuries are dominating the league... It was bugging me so much that I wanted to research how many of the players that should be starting are actually still playing entering Week 15 of the NFL season. I took every NFL roster and showed each teams starting line-up (11 starters on offense and 11 starters on defense, so 22 in total) if every player was healthy.
| AFC | Offense | Defense | Total | NFC | Offense | Defense | Total | |
| NE | 6 | 6 | 55% | DAL | 7 | 7 | 64% | |
| BUF | 7 | 5 | 55% | NYG | 5 | 7 | 55% | |
| NYJ | 4 | 7 | 50% | WSH | 6 | 8 | 64% | |
| MIA | 8 | 7 | 68% | PHI | 5 | 7 | 55% | |
| PIT | 8 | 6 | 64% | GB | 5 | 5 | 45% | |
| BAL | 5 | 7 | 55% | MIN | 6 | 9 | 68% | |
| CLE | 7 | 7 | 64% | DET | 7 | 6 | 59% | |
| CIN | 5 | 6 | 50% | CHI | 5 | 7 | 55% | |
| TEN | 6 | 8 | 64% | ATL | 11 | 9 | 91% | |
| JAX | 8 | 10 | 82% | NO | 9 | 8 | 77% | |
| HOU | 7 | 7 | 64% | CAR | 6 | 9 | 68% | |
| IND | 8 | 6 | 64% | TB | 8 | 7 | 68% | |
| LAC | 7 | 8 | 68% | LAR | 8 | 8 | 73% | |
| KC | 9 | 7 | 73% | SEA | 7 | 6 | 59% | |
| OAK | 7 | 7 | 64% | SF | 6 | 6 | 55% | |
| DEN | 6 | 7 | 59% | ARI | 3 | 7 | 45% | |
| AFC Total | 108 | 111 | 62% | NFC Total | 104 | 116 | 63% | |
| NFL Total | 212 | 227 | 62% |
The average team has 62% of it's starters still healthy to this point of the NFL season... This is honestly is a way lower percentage than I thought it'd be...
As you can see, a lot of starters are missing... It'd be like watching the Yankees but Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aroldis Chapman, Masahiro Tanaka, and David Roberston are all out for the rest of the season...
Or watching the Celtics without Gordon Hayward, Kyrie Irving, Al Horford, and Jayson Tatum...
It would be MISERABLE to lose that many talented players that contribute so much to your team! Yet in football, we see star players dropping like flies and we're supposed to go on watching Latavius Murray and Nick Foles like nothing is wrong? Like the game is still so exciting to watch?... I don't think so...
But whether it's the new rules on the monitoring of injuries, or the technology we have to correctly identify these injuries; I don't know... All I know is that there a lot of very good football players that we won't see on the field for a while (if ever again)...
The obvious new scare has been NFL players developing Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)... It's pretty much a fact that football players in the past have had this neurodegenerative disease, it just wasn't studied enough to properly diagnose.
Now that we have a better understanding of the disease, we begin to see what dramatic effects it can have on these current and former football players.
The examples being used to show the struggle with CTE has been Dave Duerson, Junior Seau and now Aaron Hernandez.
Junior Seau unfortunately took his own life in 2012 in Oceanside, CA. He had suffered with insomnia for at least the last 7 years of his life. In 2013, the Seau family released the medical studies that showed Junior Seau had suffered from CTE brain damage.
Aaron Hernandez has been the most recent and tragic story of CTE. He was a young player who was coming into form with the New England Patriots. With Rob Gronkowski's catching ability at such a big frame and Hernandez being so athletic at his big frame, it was beautiful to watch. Belichick was even putting Hernandez in the back field on some plays!
Sadly, Hernandez had struggled off the field for most of his career. He got into bar fights, and had multiple shooting allegations. On April 25, 2015 Hernandez was found guilty of murder in the first degree in Massachusetts which carries a sentence of life in prison without a possibility of parole...
The saddest part of this story isn't that the entire football world took down everything associated with Hernandez from his time at the University of Florida to his unbelievable rookie year with the Patriots...
On April 19, 2017 Aaron Hernandez was found hanging in his cell by correctional officers and was pronounced dead about an hour later at the hospital... Hernandez was only 27 years old... His family requested that Hernandez's brain be studied at Boston University for signs of CTE.
In September 2017, Boston University released that Hernandez had been suffering Stage 3 out of 4 CTE (which is one stage away from full-blown dementia!) The statement noted that "CTE is associated with aggressiveness, explosiveness, impulsivity, depression, memory loss and other cognitive changes." In interviews that neuropathologist called Hernandez's brain a classic case of the pathology.
It's difficult to sell a sport for a long-term future if it's players aren't likely to have a long-term future themselves (or one that is full of difficulties).
However, I don't think it's the health issues alone affecting the league. We also need to look at the game itself and how it's played...
A lot of Americans love football because it's the easiest sport to watch without really having to pay attention... There's 30 seconds of nothing happening, then there's 3 to 5 seconds of action. And if anything exciting happens for the those 3 to 5 seconds, the announcer or sudden increase in crowd noise can draw the viewers attention back to the game.
But where this game is starting to lose me is when I wait 30 seconds for a quick 3 seconds of action and then that play didn't even happen because of a holding penalty. Or an illegal formation. Or a false start. Or an encroachment. Or a delay of game and so on and so on...
Any of you watch the end of the Chiefs-Raiders game back on Week 7?
Well the good news for you is that the link for it is right here and your should definitely watch it!
Watch the last 30 seconds of Chiefs-Raiders Week 7
What I find hilarious is that the NFL posted this video calling it "A Series of Unbelievable Plays Cap Off Raiders' Game-Winning TD Drive!"...
When I watched this, the only thing unbelievable was all the laundry the refs had to do... All I could think was that whoever loses this game is going to feel cheated out of a win because there was a pause to review AND overturn a game-winning touchdown call, then there's delays as three straight penalties are called on three straight plays...
FINALLY, we get to a play that doesn't have any flags, but honestly it looked like Michael Crabtree pushed off of Terrance Mitchell in my opinion and should have been another freakin' penalty...
The whole point is that a game should never come down to the points where it's decided by something like what we saw in Oakland that night.
The amount of time wasted sorting out what penalty was on who and where the ball should be next drives me nuts... Especially since it looks like you could call offensive holding on almost every play in every football game...
It just looks chaotic, and every time a penalty flag is thrown I feel like I've wasted another 2 minutes of my day... It's simple math...
30 seconds of standing + 5 second play + 50 seconds to sort out the penalty + 30 seconds of standings + 5 second play - me watching = 1 play in football
The last thing we've really seen haunt football has been the "attitude issues" of its players...
I'm not talking about the players taking a knee at the National Anthem (although this action has definitely not helped the league as people have protested watching the NFL just on this issue alone). I'm talking about the issues we've seen over the past few years.
These are things like the Ray Rice elevator incident, where video footage showed him beating up his fiancée... Adrian Peterson accused of hitting his 4 year old son in the private parts... Colin Kaepernick wearing "Cop pig socks" and a Fidel Castro T-shirt while playing at Miami...
The real problem is that these problems aren't going away... This season, we saw a fight between Michael Crabtree and Aquib Talib that embarrassed the league... We saw a cheap shot from Michael Bennett of the Seahawks (who's apparently supposed to be a big-time leader in these player movements) that led to a fight with the Jaguars and the ejections of Seahawks players Sheldon Richardson and Brady Henderson... Not only were they ejected, but then Jefferson tried to climb into the bleachers to fight fans who apparently threw adult beverages at him...
He's tried to make the game safer and failed. Instead we have more penalties and ejections and a slower game.
He's tried to address and end the off-the-issues and failed. Not only do we still see multiple players in legal trouble off the field, the league now has more issues ON the field than they ever used to.
All of this is just a mess...
And the worst part about it for the league is that the NFL is now losing the youth of the game. Parents are shying away from letting their children play football because of all the health issues that come with it and the rough reputation the league has developed.
Ask baseball how important it is to have the youth involved in the game, as they are still in a major overhaul to appeal to the younger people of the United States and internationally as well...
I think the fans themselves are starting to show it as you can see the numbers over the last 4 years of viewership of the NFL is down.
I said it earlier and I'll end it here:
It's hard to see a sport for the future when the players of the sport are going to have such a rough future themselves... Let alone the amount of injuries they have to suffer through while playing, they then have to deal with injuries that will haunt them for the rest of their lives...
And the saddest part? The NFL seems alright with the direction it's going in since they re-signed their Commissioner...
When I watched this, the only thing unbelievable was all the laundry the refs had to do... All I could think was that whoever loses this game is going to feel cheated out of a win because there was a pause to review AND overturn a game-winning touchdown call, then there's delays as three straight penalties are called on three straight plays...
FINALLY, we get to a play that doesn't have any flags, but honestly it looked like Michael Crabtree pushed off of Terrance Mitchell in my opinion and should have been another freakin' penalty...
The amount of time wasted sorting out what penalty was on who and where the ball should be next drives me nuts... Especially since it looks like you could call offensive holding on almost every play in every football game...
It just looks chaotic, and every time a penalty flag is thrown I feel like I've wasted another 2 minutes of my day... It's simple math...
30 seconds of standing + 5 second play + 50 seconds to sort out the penalty + 30 seconds of standings + 5 second play - me watching = 1 play in football
The last thing we've really seen haunt football has been the "attitude issues" of its players...
I'm not talking about the players taking a knee at the National Anthem (although this action has definitely not helped the league as people have protested watching the NFL just on this issue alone). I'm talking about the issues we've seen over the past few years.
These are things like the Ray Rice elevator incident, where video footage showed him beating up his fiancée... Adrian Peterson accused of hitting his 4 year old son in the private parts... Colin Kaepernick wearing "Cop pig socks" and a Fidel Castro T-shirt while playing at Miami...
The real problem is that these problems aren't going away... This season, we saw a fight between Michael Crabtree and Aquib Talib that embarrassed the league... We saw a cheap shot from Michael Bennett of the Seahawks (who's apparently supposed to be a big-time leader in these player movements) that led to a fight with the Jaguars and the ejections of Seahawks players Sheldon Richardson and Brady Henderson... Not only were they ejected, but then Jefferson tried to climb into the bleachers to fight fans who apparently threw adult beverages at him...
Either way, it has been a BAD look for the NFL recently and there's no signs of it changing... How do I know? Because the NFL just re-signed Commissioner Roger Goodell to contract worth roughly $200 million dollars over the next 5 years...
This contract was not met with the warmest regards from owners, as Jerry Jones (owner of the Cowboys) tried to rally the rest of the league to not re-sign the Commissioner... And I'm going to have to agree with Jerry on this one... What has this commissioner done to deserve to be re-hired, let alone get that much money at all?
He's tried to address and end the off-the-issues and failed. Not only do we still see multiple players in legal trouble off the field, the league now has more issues ON the field than they ever used to.
All of this is just a mess...
And the worst part about it for the league is that the NFL is now losing the youth of the game. Parents are shying away from letting their children play football because of all the health issues that come with it and the rough reputation the league has developed.
Ask baseball how important it is to have the youth involved in the game, as they are still in a major overhaul to appeal to the younger people of the United States and internationally as well...
I think the fans themselves are starting to show it as you can see the numbers over the last 4 years of viewership of the NFL is down.
I said it earlier and I'll end it here:
It's hard to see a sport for the future when the players of the sport are going to have such a rough future themselves... Let alone the amount of injuries they have to suffer through while playing, they then have to deal with injuries that will haunt them for the rest of their lives...
And the saddest part? The NFL seems alright with the direction it's going in since they re-signed their Commissioner...
As of 15 December 2017
-Host Alex Strizak
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