With the Baltimore Ravens standing at 1-6, it would be naive to have any optimism about the team’s season. Their season is over and the final nine games are just 540 more minutes of football that Ravens fans will unfortunately have to endure.
Their abysmal record brings plenty of justified complaints. But let’s take things out of just Baltimore for a change.
What Happened to the NFL?
Where did the old NFL go? Why has this year’s NFL become so ridiculously unwatchable?
This is the least I have ever been interested in professional football.
It isn’t just annoying and infuriating trends during Ravens games, but rather trends that I’ve seen in nearly every game, particularly this season.
Officiating
How incompetent do these NFL refs seem? I mean, really, how long can a game go without some sort of slip-up or miscommunication by the officiating crew? Maybe five minutes?
We can take Monday night’s Ravens game for example. The obvious embarrassment is the blatant unjustified penalty on the Ravens in which John Urschel – who clearly reported as eligible – was ruled ineligible. That put Ravens fans up in arms, but the bigger problem is how often there are unnecessary stoppages in play thanks to amateurish officiating.
Look no further than later in the same game, when Arizona quarterback Carson Palmer threw the ball out of the back of the end zone in what seemed to be a routine play. The officials stopped to discuss what was likely a debate on whether the play was intentional grounding.
I, and likely most of America, was sitting home shouting “EVERYONE KNOWS THAT’S NOT INTENTIONAL GROUNDING! MOVE ON WITH THE DAMN GAME!”
These instances are all too common. The games are constantly slowed down by unnecessary flags and discussions by inept officiating crews. It kills the mood of the game and drags on contests in almost NBA-like fashion.
From Monday night’s slew of officiating slip-ups, to the blown call in Seattle earlier this month, to the incompetent handling of the game clock in a Steelers-Chargers game, NFL officiating has become unbearable.
Broadcasts
Speaking of unbearable, the broadcasts nowadays have been atrocious. From seemingly out-of-touch, unprepared color commentators such as Solomon Wilcots, to unimaginably poor studio analysts such as Bart Scott, the voices of the broadcasts are a pain to experience.
But the voices take a backseat to the cameramen of just about every NFL game broadcast. How often does the camera fixate on a coach on the sideline for five, six, seven seconds, while you’re left yelling “show the game!” at your TV?
Using recent memory as an example of another issue, think back to Monday night’s game. On one play, the ESPN broadcast showed a Cardinals offensive play from a low-angle, end zone view (there’s the first problem) and then when Palmer rolled left, the camera didn’t follow, leaving viewers left to watch, well, not the play.
Issues like these have become an unnecessary annoyance for what used to be a league that simply broadcasted the game without getting fancy with the camera.
Discipline
We are dealing with a league in which Greg Hardy can smack a clipboard out of the hands of a coaching staff member and get praised by his owner for being a team leader.
We are dealing with a league in which Quiny Enunwa gets suspended for four games stemming from a situation in which the charges were dropped.
We are dealing with a league in which smoking pot warrants a more strict penalty than cheating (and in Tom Brady‘s case, no penalty).
There is no rhyme or reason to any disciplinary proceedings in today’s NFL.
Injuries
On Sunday, I checked my phone and saw that Houston Texans running back Arian Foster tore his achilles. Maybe five years ago, I would have cared. Now I feel so numb to season-ending injuries for NFL players that I didn’t seem to have any interest.
Torn ACL, torn achilles, concussions. They are all just much too common nowadays.
These injuries are much too frequent and much too widely accepted yet the NFL has done nothing to take proper precautions to fix the issue.
From poor field conditions to almost nonexistent offseason practice time, there are multiple signs that point to increase injury risk.
The nearly defunct offseason programs and reduced training camp rigor are at the forefront of this issue. If players hardly practice at live speed before September, they’ll be much more susceptible to injury during a live game.
Quality of play
Think back to, say, seven years ago. Didn’t the NFL seem much more balanced in terms of talent?
Logically, one would think that with time, the NFL’s talent pool would only strengthen. But the exact opposite has happened.
How many good offensive lines are there in the NFL? Maybe five?
How many teams have multiple cornerbacks who consistently cover? Maybe five?
The NFL is supposed to be the best 1,600+ football players in the world, but nowadays it seems that not even half of the league’s personnel is of NFL quality.
Headset issues
How idiotic is it that almost every week a team has to complain about headset issues? Seriously, HEADSET ISSUES!
For such a premier entity as the NFL, simple processes such as headset communications can’t even be handled.
It’s not hard to find the evidence piled up. How about Pittsburgh’s headset issues. Or Buffalo’s. Or Baltimore’s. If the NFL officials can’t fix simple issues such as these, what can they be trusted to fix?
Conclusion
Will all of these irritating issues force me, or others, to give up on the NFL? Probably not.
But I (and surely thousands of others) am losing interest in the NFL. These past seven NFL weeks have been the least amount of NFL football I have watched since I started following football.
I can barely persevere through an entire Ravens game, let alone a non-Ravens matchup. The NFL product is rapidly declining, and commissioner Roger Goodell has a long to-do list of issues that must be addressed sooner rather than later.
This is not the NFL I grew to love.
