A PAINFUL EXHIBITION
With coaches smartly sitting starters to avoid injury, it is obvious preseason is just a sham
IF YOU’RE a Giants or Jets fan and you’re poised to hang out on the couch Thursday night to watch their respective preseason finales, you know exactly what you’re going to see: backups, backups to the backups and players who have as much chance to make the team as the Browns have of winning Super Bowl LIII.
The Jets, in fact, on Monday signed young quarterback John Wolford, whom they might play for much of Thursday’s game at Philadelphia so they can spare their other three quarterbacks from playing much — if at all.
Sitting starters has become the norm for the fourth and final NFL preseason games in recent years. Coaches have seen what they need to see out of their starters in the first three weeks, and damned if they’re going to risk any chance of injuries before the start of the regular season.
But there’s been a disturbing shift this preseason: Now a lot of coaches are not playing any starters in any of the games, and that’s made the four-game NFL preseason more of sham than ever.
Worse yet, it’s an utter and transparent rip-off of their fans who are being forced to pay full ticket prices to watch this slop.
“It’s a waste,’’ CBS NFL analyst Boomer Esiason said Tuesday of the preseason.
“This was all-time bad this preseason,’’ CBS studio analyst Phil Simms said. “It’s disappointing.’’
If you happened to tune in for the nationally televised preseason game between the Super Bowl-champion Eagles and the Browns on Thursday, you witnessed a 5-0 Browns victory in which Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles threw two interceptions and was sacked three times, losing a fumble on one of them that went for a Cleveland safety.
The quality of play was an embarrassment to the league. But at least the Eagles and Browns played many of their starters.
As long as preseason games have been played, the third traditionally has been the one true dress rehearsal in which starting players are on the field for at least a half. In last week’s third preseason game, new Bears coach Matt Nagy sat almost all of his starters, including secondyear quarterback Mitch Trubisky.
“We’re at almost 2,000 snaps in practice,” Nagy told reporters Saturday. “For somebody telling me 25 to 30 reps [in the third preseason game is going to make him better Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, it’s not going to happen.”
Aaron Rodgers has attempted four passes in one preseason game for the Packers this summer. That’s more understandable than in the case of Trubisky, because the established veteran Rodgers doesn’t need game reps as much as Trubisky — who isn’t coming off a Tom Brady-like season as a rookie (seven touchdowns, seven interceptions and a 77.5 rating).
If you’re a Rams fan, you haven’t seen their two most important players, quarterback Jared Goff and running back Todd Gurley, play a single preseason down.
Nate Burleson, a former NFL receiver now with CBS and the NFL Network, has been doing the color commentary for Rams preseason games and has found himself as disappointed, and the fans short-changed.
“I’m getting ready for the game and getting goose bumps and I’ve
got all my storylines and I’ve got my notes, and the game starts and the starters are sitting and I’m ripping up half of my booklet,’’ Burleson said. “These coaches are more concerned about the start of the [regular] season than they are getting guys out there and knocking the rust off. Things have changed since I left the game [in 2014].’’ Not for the better. Something — such as reducing the pres ea son schedule to two games — has to be done about this sham by the league before it embarrasses itself any further. If change cannot be implemented by next year, certainly by the time the current collective bargaining agreement expires in 2021 something better be done.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, speaking on 105.3 FM radio in Dallas, made the most recent pitch for fewer preseason games and more in the regular season.
“I think, candidly, it’s probably physically better for players than it is to have the longer preseason, the longer practicing,” Jones said. “Our studies show that we actually have a ramped-up injury situation with players during preseason as opposed to the injury factor in the regular season.”