While league commissioner Roger Goodell and the rest of the NFL’s top decision-makers try to figure out how, when and where to expand the league outside of the United States, a longstanding element of the league is dying a slow death on home soil.
In fact, the NFL preseason may already be dead.
Not literally, of course, as the league features another full slate of “games” for fan consumption this week. And you can bet those fans will be consuming, based on national viewership numbers for the Hall of Fame Game to kick off the preseason.
Yes, fans are still interested in the preseason. The problem is, the teams themselves have mostly opted out.
That’s been a trend for years now, coinciding with the rise of joint practices. And it was an unavoidable reality in New England this week, with the Eagles visiting the Patriots in Foxboro for two joint practice sessions ahead of the teams’ preseason game on Saturday night at Gillette Stadium.
From the moment the sun rose on Wednesday, there was a genuine anticipation around Gillette. The Athletic’s Chad Graff saw the longest line that he’s ever seen to get in to training camp. When the Eagles showed up on the Patriots’ practice fields, they were greeted with heavy booing from the home crowd.
That same crowd was riled up for the start of one-on-one drills, roaring as a Drake Maye deep shot to A.J. Brown was nearly completed, and letting out a collective groan when the pass fell incomplete.
The Boston Herald’s Andrew Callahan described the early part of practice — before full-team drills or 7-on-7 had even begun — by saying, “This might already be the loudest crowd I’ve heard at a Patriots practice in nine years on the beat.”
That noise came from Patriots fans and Eagles fans alike, as plenty of Philadelphia-based fans made the trip to take this in. Watch the one Eagles fan in a Saquon Barkley jersey on the hill celebrate an incompletion in a drill as if it had been a third down in the Super Bowl:
From those one-on-one drills, through the full-team periods, beat reporters on both sides breathlessly reported the play-by-play, going blow-for-blow on every single competitive act that took place on the practice fields.
As was the case a week ago when the Colts practiced with the Patriots, fans jumped on social media to fight about the results when certain clips were posted online.
Eagles reporter Eliott Shorr-Parks, who trailblazed by creating a win-loss record for the Eagles at joint practices a day before these ones began, tweeted 39 times about the practice session. (One of those was a 2:15-second video of him giving the “W” to the Patriots on the day.) He wasn’t tweeting into the void, either. Those posts — many of which were simple play-by-play tweets — got engagement.
After practice wrapped up, star players strode to the podium to give press conferences before reporters filed stories, distributed statistics, and broke down the biggest plays of the day.
This might already be the loudest crowd I’ve heard at a Patriots practice in nine years on the beat.
Andrew Callahan, Boston Herald
Based on the hype, the fan involvement, and the media coverage, you would’ve sworn that this was an NFL Sunday.
In fact, it was merely a Wednesday in August. And with a second day of the pomp and circumstance, it would be fair to wonder how all of those involved could possibly retain enough energy for the actual preseason game that awaits them on Saturday night.
Fortunately for them, it won’t be a problem. Everyone knows that the “game” scheduled for Saturday night won’t involve any of the starters who played on Wednesday. Instead of Drake Maye and Jaylen Hurts, it’ll be Tommy DeVito and Andy Dalton. A.J. Brown, who faced off against his old teammates all day on Wednesday, will be watching Saturday’s game along with the fans who paid to be in attendance. (Fans paid zero dollars to get into joint practices.)
Of course, the preseason has always been the preseason. But at least there were usually glimpses of what the actual team would look like. Whether that was a series with the starters, a whole half with the starters, or the traditional “playing into the third quarter” routine for the third preseason game, fans and media at least consumed some football in August that would have some relation to the football that would then be played in September and beyond.
Now, the preseason games do still offer opportunities for everyone lower on the depth chart to earn a spot and carve out a role by impressing their coaches in a game setting. That’s a critical element of roster building, both for the 53-man roster and the 16-man practice squad.
Nobody should downplay the importance of that work. It’s just that those opportunities have always been available in the preseason games. They used to take place later in the games, after the starters played. Now, they make up the entire game.
And to be clear: This is a sensible development. As player salaries have skyrocketed, teams are going to take every measure possible to keep their players healthy. Yet while coaching staffs obviously feel more comfortable about the mitigation of risks at controlled joint practices over unpredictable preseason games, it is still worth noting that the greatest player of all time found value in those mid-August snaps.
“Preseason, regular season, I never wanted to be taken off the field,” Brady wrote on Instagram this week after seeing that video shared. “Practice makes perfect. Too many people looking for easy ways out these days. When you’re a football player, and it’s football season, your job is to play football.”
That sentiment remains true. It just applies on joint practice days instead of “game” days.
Clearly, NFL teams are comfortable moving on from the preseason as we used to know it. Our nation will survive this loss of exhibition football, no doubt.
It’s just worth acknowledging, and it’s certainly worth adapting.
Modernizing the preseason wouldn’t be difficult at all. Given the clear interest in the joint practice sessions, and given the equally clear interest from owners in charging fans to attend preseason “games,” these practices can be moved inside the stadium and can be moved to prime time and can fill a three-hour TV window a few times in August.
Key players would get in their important on-field work. Fans — in attendance and at home — can watch it take place. Statisticians can pump out information much more useful than the fifth-string running back’s yardage total in the fourth quarter of a preseason game.
That would create one issue, as the bottom-of-the-roster players would miss out on some valuable reps under the lights, with the cameras on and everybody watching. But, well, there’s plenty of summer for the coaches to figure out how to best evaluate the players on their team.
The NFL is a business. A big one. And one that hopes to inch closer toward total global relevance in the coming years.
They may achieve that, sure. But in the meantime, can they put just a little bit of effort into fixing the preseason? Putting these joint practices in front of more eyes would seem to be the simplest and most effective solution.
