NFL in 2022

[Rupert Patrick]

Hockey is great.

In other news, can't even avoid the NFL's/media's nonsense during college football. All day scrolling across the bottom with breaking news updates on owners and players responses to Trump. Can't wait for tomorrow . . .

He ruined the USFL and now he's going to ruin the NFL too? Guess I'll be muting the games tomorrow. I don't watch the pregame stuff anyway.

[JWL]

Hockey is great.

In other news, can't even avoid the NFL's/media's nonsense during college football. All day scrolling across the bottom with breaking news updates on owners and players responses to Trump. Can't wait for tomorrow . . .

He ruined the USFL and now he's going to ruin the NFL too? Guess I'll be muting the games tomorrow. I don't watch the pregame stuff anyway.

Rules to make the game safer could ruin it. I don't believe the weird people who claim to be boycotting the sport because Colin Kaepernick didn't stand for the national anthem or the other weird people who say they are boycotting the sport because Kaepernick is currently unemployed will ruin the sport.

[JWL]

My point above is I think those were/are what we call casual fans. I'm sure they will continue to drop in here and there. The sport will go down the drain when diehard fans move on.

I suppose it is impossible to avoid politics now, so I'll put in my two cents. I found Kaepernick's decision to not stand for the national anthem to not be the best move he could make but I don't have a problem with what he did in that it was his right. He did not break any law. A book, article in Sports Illustrated, speeches, etc. could have been used to get his message out and have it not affect the game and telecasts. Instead, what we had were announcers having to note "This guy kneeled", "This guy raised his fist", "This one touched that one's shoulder during the national anthem", etc.

Now we have President Trump starting more trouble on Friday night. I now hope many players demonstrate during the national anthem.

Finally, do we need that questionable song before every game anyway? The answer is we do not need it.

[JWL]

As far as the more actual football stuff, which is what I meant for this thread to be but where things went is perfectly fine, I do see the league decreasing the number of preseason games to three for each team. We would then see more scrimmages between teams in training camp although they would be more boring to televise if televised at all.

I would not like it but I can definitely see the league increasing the number of playoff teams to 14.

I am all for having 18 regular season weeks with each team still playing 16 games.

[JWL]

I like my football to be simple. I want to watch the games, then I want to talk about the games. It seems like so much of the coverage of the NFL is about things unrelated to the action on the field. Even fantasy football is like this, where the focus is on the final result (how many garbage TDs did your QB throw for after being down 34-0?) as opposed to what actually happened in the game. It seems like its more of a 'chore' to watch a football game than it used to be, but maybe its just me.

Unless one is bothered by seeing player stats on the scroll during games, I would think it is pretty easy to avoid fantasy football discussions. Reaser is the only other forum member who I know plays fantasy football. Both of us (I know this through e-mails with him) know how to separate real football from fantasy. You root for certain statistics.

In 2015, I ran a 10-team fantasy league with both a QB slot and a super flex slot (a flex slot where you have the choice to start a QB, RB, WR, or TE) where interceptions did not count. I made sure to get a top quarterback early (Drew Brees) and wait a while for my next one. I figured Blake Bortles would have a lot of good garbage time stats and that I could get him pretty late in the draft. Bortles helped me win the league. Trust me, there are not many people that can say they won fantasy leagues with Blake Bortles playing a key role. It was not just him. Because I knew I could wait on him, I was scooping up more valuable runners and receivers in earlier rounds.

This year the league is back and I made it a bit more of a challenge by taking away points if your quarterbacks throw interceptions.

I do realize it may get annoying at the water cooler on Monday morning when Herb in accounting says, "I need Dak Prescott to score at least 14.7 points vs the Cardinals for me to win in fantasy" as opposed to, "It will be interesting to see if Dak Prescott can bounce back in what can be a loud place to play although there will be many Dallas fans there."

[John Grasso]

Unless one is bothered by seeing player stats on the scroll during games,..."

One of my pet peeves is watching a replay of a sporting event that I did not see live
and do not know the score of only to have the scroll provide the results of the event.
Doesn't anyone involved with the transmission pay attention to what they're doing?

[Rupert Patrick]

My point above is I think those were/are what we call casual fans. I'm sure they will continue to drop in here and there. The sport will go down the drain when diehard fans move on.

I suppose it is impossible to avoid politics now, so I'll put in my two cents. I found Kaepernick's decision to not stand for the national anthem to not be the best move he could make but I don't have a problem with what he did in that it was his right. He did not break any law. A book, article in Sports Illustrated, speeches, etc. could have been used to get his message out and have it not affect the game and telecasts. Instead, what we had were announcers having to note "This guy kneeled", "This guy raised his fist", "This one touched that one's shoulder during the national anthem", etc.

Now we have President Trump starting more trouble on Friday night. I now hope many players demonstrate during the national anthem.

Finally, do we need that questionable song before every game anyway? The answer is we do not need it.

Trying to leave the politics out of it as much as possible, now that the President has gotten involved, as polarizing as he is, I worry that whether you stand for the National Anthem this week or not will be interpreted by fans, fellow players, the media, and (worst of all) the blogosphere as not whether or not you support the Anthem, but it will be seen as a show of support for the President of the United States. I worry that those players who stand for the Anthem will be heavily criticized by the media and fans in social media ("How can you support him?", "Did you vote for him?", "This player is a (bunch of different derogatory words that end in -ist)"). What happens if there are teams where five guys want to stand and the rest don't? How do they handle that?

Why can't the games themselves be the most important things anymore? As much as I hate to admit it, perhaps the only solution is to remove the National Anthem as there are just too many people out there who no longer respect this country or it's history, good or bad.

[JWL]

Why can't the games themselves be the most important things anymore? As much as I hate to admit it, perhaps the only solution is to remove the National Anthem as there are just too many people out there who no longer respect this country or it's history, good or bad.

Yes, all of that stuff is a concern. But Trump said what he said on Friday and most would say it wasn't right. Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid and Malcolm Jenkins and company were not even actually protesting the flag or the country or the national anthem {Let's not insult people here}. As I stated last night, I just think Kaepernick did not choose the best forum to express his views.

Edited by KRC. See comment above.

[JWL]

Unless one is bothered by seeing player stats on the scroll during games,..."

One of my pet peeves is watching a replay of a sporting event that I did not see live
and do not know the score of only to have the scroll provide the results of the event.
Doesn't anyone involved with the transmission pay attention to what they're doing?

I understand. It does come across as silly but I guess the networks haven't figured out a way to remove the game score on the scroll of the game that is being replayed.

[Reaser]

But Trump said what he said on Friday and most would say it wasn't right. Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid and Malcolm Jenkins and company were not even actually protesting the flag or the country or the national anthem ...

Well, no one knows what's being protested, including the players that are taking a knee, allegedly doing so in protest. They even admit as such. That there isn't one or even a unified reasoning for kneeling -- other than today, of course, with it being in response to President Trump's comments. Prior to that, not really a clear message.

Lets look at the timeline:

- Kicking things off; Kaepernick wears socks depicting police officers as pigs.
- Kaepernick sits for the national anthem and no one notices.
Couple weeks later ...
- Kaepernick sits for national anthem and it's noticed and media blows it up. They ask him why he was sitting and it didn't really seem like he had a prepared answer, said some words then spit out "oppressed" which clicked as the perfect buzz word for him to use in subsequent interviews in the following days/months.
- People complain about him sitting, changes from sitting to taking a knee as a compromise.
- After seeing the attention Kaepernick received a handful of other players start taking a knee, for the same attention. When asked why, they responded they took a knee to support Kaepernick. Not that they took a knee for any protest but that they did it to support a player who was taking a knee in act that was likely closer to hatred than as an act of love and wanting to unite people.
- Taking a knee goes on and on so FF to a year later. Still not a unified 'protest', just players getting attention for taking a knee. When asked why, each had/has a different response, from equality, to racial injustice, to police brutality, to an asinine account of alleged racial profiling, and so on.
- After all that time had passed and the 'conversation' was always and still was about the act of taking a knee and not about the why. Finally a couple players get together to explain what the protest is about. After essentially explaining that it isn't a unified protest and that "there is no one issue for the protests" and that players are protesting for different reasons, the apparent reasoning given for their protesting is to end the monetary bail system. Okay. Players seeking attention by taking a knee hadn't preached that as a major issue over the past year. Which shows that there hasn't been one clear message. Just players taking a knee for attention.
- Finally, we get to this weekend where players are taking a knee in response to President Trump's comments. In response to. So they're now protesting the President by protesting the anthem/flag. Yet one more, different, and another reason to get attention for taking a knee. While fans in the stadium boo and chant for them to stand. So what's really divisive here?

Two things that made me laugh this morning before the London game kicked off.

1. The media's reporting of the President's comments. "Trump said ..." and would be a 'quote' of something he didn't even say. Plus of course the twisting it into being racist. His comments were dumb and stand on their own as dumb, they didn't need exaggerated or twisted into something else. He made himself look foolish, but of course these days the media and talking heads can't help themselves. I laughed to myself at the absurdity of it all. From the President's comments to the media/pregame shows 'reporting' on his comments that he didn't even make, ha.

2. Before the London game I also saw someone say that kneeling for the anthem wasn't disrespectful. Opinions can differ on that but a couple minutes later what made me laugh was as soon as OUR anthem ended players were quick to their feet for "God Save the Queen", as to not disrespect THEIR anthem. So they made sure to stand so they didn't disrespect an anthem, but kneeling for the previous anthem isn't disrespect. What? Ha. This is course ignoring the hilarity of conflict in not wanting to stand for an anthem/flag because of [insert conjured up reasoning of choice] while immediately standing for the next anthem/flag. Might need a history lesson ...