Let me make clear, I don’t have a problem with our fans who love PS games. I get it- it’s football and we’ve all waited a half a year to see some kind of pigskin play. if you enjoy PS games, keep enjoying them because the owners fight tooth and nail to keep them for cash purposes. They aren’t going anywhere.
But I have evolved to the point where I would never play a single starter even one down in a meaningless pre-season game. Here are my reasons:
- Practices, not PS games are where teams really prepare for the games that matter. New offensive and defensive wrinkles and systems are not perfected in a PS game. It’s in practice.
- PS games have no game planning, the absolute most vanilla of offensive plays and defensive alignments are called. Nothing big from the playbook is rolled out in PS games.
- Opponents in PS games also usually only use their most vanilla play calls and don’t care who wins.
- PS games should be used to decide roster spots.
- PS games can showcase the potential of rookies or backups and how they handle competitive situations.
- PS games can decide kicker, punter, backup QB and many other (mostly backup) positions.
- Practice is where teams prepare for the real regular season games each week. That’s where the coaches game plan, learn about players strengths and weaknesses, etc.
- In today’s NFL with the veterans who are on big contracts in the cap era, it makes zero sense to risk a huge portion of your cap space in a meaningless pre-season game.
As I said at the beginning- IMO if college and HS football don’t need pre-season games to get ready for the regular season, NFL starters can get ready for the games that matter in practice too.
I would never risk a big portion of cap space in a meaningless game. I know that’s not a popular opinion with fans, but it makes the most sense the way the game is structured these days.
