Despite Record Ratings and Revenue, I Think The NFL Has A Serious Problem On It's Hands: The Product On The Field Stinks Out Loud

Dante9/23/2024 11:30 PM

Sportico - The 2024 NFL season got off to a strong start last weekend, and while online pundits and media watchers grumbled about Tom Brady’s debut in the Fox booth, the TV turnout for the Sunday windows was beyond reproach.
According to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, the first five TV windows of the fall campaign averaged 19.86 million viewers, good for a 14% lift versus the year-ago period (17.59 million). While the Sunday afternoon format wasn’t an exact match with the 2023 opener—after three years of staging non-exclusive doubleheaders in Week 1, the NFL reverted to the standard regional/national setup—the overall deliveries suggest that an awful lot of Americans had been jonesing for football after the long hiatus.
NBC won the week with the Ravens-Chiefs Kickoff Game, as the linear broadcast averaged 24.56 million viewers, down 194,000 compared to last season’s Lions-Chiefs scrap. A boost in streaming impressions more than made up for the small lag in TV deliveries; all told, Kansas City’s 27-20 victory averaged 29.16 million viewers, which marked a 6% increase versus the year-ago blended average (27.54 million).
Also putting up big numbers was the Fox late-national window, which featured Dallas and Cleveland with coverage in 94% of all markets. While the game itself was a bit of a snooze—Dak Prescott & Co. romped to a 33-17 win over a Browns team led by a thoroughly washed Deshaun Watson—the Cowboys performed their usual brand of ratings juju. In Brady’s first live game as a broadcaster, Fox averaged 23.93 million viewers. While that was good for a 47% increase over last year’s window (16.27 million for Packers-Bears with 84% coverage), it’s worth noting that Fox last year had to compete with CBS in the late window (Eagles-Patriots, 21.35 million, 69% coverage).

Ok so before I begin, let me emphasize that this is not a blog about the NFL having a ratings problem - far from it, they're higher than ever.

This is not a blog about the NFL having a revenue problem - again far from it. The league continues to bend viewers over forcing us fans to pony up subscription after subscription fee in order to watch, and we happily do it.

(That's actually inflated a tad. The actual numbers look like this)

- $72.99 Youtube TV

- $349 NFL Sunday Ticket

- $8.99 Prime Video (TNF and Black Friday Game)

- $5.99 Peacock

- $10.99 ESPN+

- $6.99 Netflix

The total cost is actually around $855.86.

What a bargain.

Team valuations are at all time highs, preposterously high figures, and even the basement dwellers of the league still draw on Sundays.

What this is a blog about, is about the NFL's actual "product".

It flat out stinks.

I fired this heater of a tweet off yesterday afternoon in the middle of another Sunday snooze fest and for an app where people love nothing more than to be contrarians, and tell you what a fucking moron you are, the twitter universe largely seemed to agree.

This first month of football seriously feels like we’re watching preseason. I think it's because nobody actually plays in the actual preseason, or takes it seriously anymore.

Perhaps that's why injuries to super stars seems so prevalent these past few seasons compared to back in the day?

Through three weeks, look where we're at with that.

Puka Nacua : IR

CMC : Potentially IR

Tua Tagovailoa : Concussion

Jordan Love : Knee

Jordan Addison : Ankle

David Njoku : Ankle

Kenneth Walker : Doubtful

Raheem Mostert : Chest

Tee Higgins : Hamstring

Jake Ferguson : Knee

Rome Odunze : Knee

Keenan Allen : Heel

Patrick Mahomes

Justin Herbert

Sam Darnold

Skylar Thompson

Rhamondre Stevenson

DeVonta Smith

Justin Jefferson

Amari Cooper

Tank Dell

Adam Thielen

Britain Covey

Darius Slayton

Trey McBride

Sam LaPorta

Tucker Kraft

Cole Kmet

You simply can't have an exciting product if you're not putting your best talent out there. Because it's all banged up and on the injured list.

Bill Belichick has always said, “you don’t know who your team is until October”, but it seems even worse now. There’s almost zero carryover week to week.

Everybody loves parity, but it's a total crap shoot week to week, wondering which team is going to show up.

I think a lot of it has to do with how abysmal the quarterback play has been overall. Which is extra crazy when you consider how much the league has skewed rule changes and officiating to cater to the passing game.

I mean look at the league "leader" stats.

And I love Andy Dalton as much as the next guy, but when he is the guy setting the bar for the first month of the season, on what is arguably the worst team in the league, there is a problem.

Some people are attributing this all to how fucking horrendous the offensive line play seems to be across the league. When you consider the fact that many of the most athletic players on the field are defensive lineman today, (absolute freaks of nature who weigh 300 lbs and are quick as lightning) and that's a double whammy.

Others argue that today's quarterbacks just flat out "suck" compared to what we grew up being spoiled by getting to watch. For whatever reason, they're not coming out of college well enough prepared, and teams aren't developing them properly, and it shows.

Stats don't lie.

Across the league, passing touchdowns are down, passing yardage is down, and that's led Mel Kiper Jr. to go on a crusade the past few weeks saying that team defenses dropping safeties back to "prevent" depths essentially have taken away the deep threat, condensed everything to short, "keeping everything in front of them", and the result has been even more of the "dink and dunk" offensive schemes that put everybody to sleep.

Maybe he's not wrong?

Personally, I think it's a combination of everything mentioned.

The rules, the constant flurry of flags being thrown on every single play, the mounting injuries, the repetitive 3-and-outs, and the shitty standard of quarterbacking overall.

As far as the game planning, and execution, I think it starts at the top, and I don't think coaching has ever been worse, collectively, across the board. When you really think about it, how many "good" coaches are there in the NFL today? You can count on one hand right? And the bad ones aren't just bad. They are fucking atrocious.

The officiating has never been worse. The amount of penalties, combined with how ticky-tack they are, makes it almost unwatchable.

So what's the solution?

I don't know to be honest. Maybe I'm crazy and it's all just a combination of no longer getting to enjoy watching the greatest player of all time play, and the greatest coach of all time coach every week like I got to for 20 years, and living in Chicago and being subjected to the Bears every week?

I'll still take a subpar NFL football product over the XFL/AFL, I just find myself longing for the days where football was football, and we were left having our minds blown by shit we'd never seen before on a weekly basis.

p.s. - I think I kind of love this idea?

nfl

Dante9/23/2024 11:30 PM