“The Jetsons” was an animated 30-minutes TV show that aired in 1963-64 for 24-episodes. Years later there would be various attempts to re-launch the show which featured life in 2062. In episode #3 the protagonist George goes to a football game. The players are robots. The coach pulls the levers. Some 60+ years later the episode raises questions. Is football in the process of morphing into this alternate reality?

It was a good week for the Washington Football Team to have a Bye. The debacle at the end of the Giants game had submerged the franchise into ridicule. The usual “Off with their heads” folks were in hog heaven. Then came the San Francisco game. This game was a classic case of “Glass half full, glass half empty.” The first half was dreadful. Then, the second was delightful, yet unfulfilling. It was enough to reign in the dogs a bit. Now it’s a week without the team on the high wire. It’s welcomed.

San Fran Nutshell

We’re going to dispatch with this game in short order. San Francisco is a team that is wonderfully efficient and effective IF they have all of their older players on the field. Already down Deebo Samuel and Nick Bosa San Fran strutted their stuff until Mike Evans left the game. It was nearly “Boom Boom, out go the lights.” The 49ers had 375-yards total on the night. Only 67 of them came after halftime with 65 of them coming on one drive. The ended the night with three each “3-and-outs.” With Evans gone it was easy to bracket George Kittle. The other Receivers couldn’t get open.

Kyle Shanahan is sitting on a 6-0 record. But, that team can’t stay in one piece with the key players all getting old, sans QB Brock Purdy,

The other takeaway from the game is that the large points deficit freed up Jayden Daniels to take some risks throwing. Protecting the football can become too much of a deterrent to producing something if it becomes the paramount concern. He started letting the ball rip. It exposed the SF Secondary a bit. Although Safety Malik Mustapha was really the difference in the late stages of the game. He saved their bacon.

Defensively life became a lot easier when Evans was gone. Sonny Styles continues to shine. He has 4-Passes Defended to his credit now. For those who follow such things Styles, and Frankie Luvu get very high grades for “Downhill Runs.” His first second of movement towards a run stop is the third-best in the League. He’s managing to do this without over-biting on play action. In a category titled “Downhill Combo” he’s fifth-best at stopping on play action. Good stuff. If the Secondary was just a bit better. Sigh.

While here Micah Mustapha was fined $6,998 for a hit to a defenseless WFT player. Fred Warner was not fined despite some nasty looking shots.

Onward.

Diminished Product

October is racing past the Larboard and running toward the stern. Washington’s next game isn’t until November. Teams should be playing good solid football right now. Few are. The modern approach to the pre-season en toto is not working to produce a good early season product. Camp, Pre-season games, all of it is designed to maximize “Player Safety.” Practice in pads is so last century. The results? September football, while entertaining, is far from crisp. And, injuries feel like they’ve hit an untenable level. It’s not a single team thing. It’s League-wide.

When the season starts the players are not ready for 60-minutes of competitive football. It contributes to the injury situation.

Washington started Camp with arguably 5 “Blue” players. Those are the perennial top-tier All-Pro/Pro Bowl types. Two of them are gone for the season now. One was lost for the season before the first pre-season game. Washington sports 22-players on the Injury Report with 5-others on the Injured List. Last week’s opponent, San Francisco has only 14 on the Injury Report. But, it has another 14-players on the Injured List. That’s 55-players either hurt to the point they can’t suit up or are walking wounded. That’s basically one-half of a team per side. And, the season is just barely one-third done.

Injuries have always been a part of football. But, we’re on a new and higher plateau now. Then, this week we had the saga of Jalen Hurts and the blood clots. Apparently flying for 7-hours with blood clots is not a good idea. Who would have thought that following football would involve learning about such arcanaeum as the Virchow Triad? Within 24-hours of the story growing legs the League sent out it’s Chief Physician to scold the media for questioning the situation. The League is desperate to get international games. This week they’re playing one in Paris. If you haven’t heard there’s a bit of civil unrest going on there. “No Worries” says the League. When the Washington/ Indianapolis game tickets wouldn’t sell the League slashed to prices so the TV would show Tottenham Hotspur stadium full to the rafters. Getting the picture? The League wants the game to go global. Don’t stand in the way of it unless you want to wear tank treads.

Add to the injury depletions the total number of penalties. Right now an average team is flagged 8.6 times per game. Washington sits on the dividing line between the 3rd and 4th Quartile. They get flagged 9.2 times per game. You would think they are all pre-snap penalties. But, that accounts for right at one-third of the total. And, again, it’s right on the 3Q/4Q line.

The current norm is for 17+ penalties per game. If a game averages out to 130-plays or so between Offense and Defense, add in 25 for the Special Teams. It averages out to a flag every 9 plays. It’s too much. Then there are the no-calls that should be flags and the result is a game that suffers from poor officiating. It diminishes the product.

“What are we doing here?”

Pat Kirwan, the football lifer who provides daily commentary on the NFL Network frequently asks the question, “What are we doing here?” It’s usually in response to a questionable personnel move. But, on a broader plane the question begs an answer.

Never forget that the NFL is a TV Show

David Moulton

The NFL is a case study for what happens when a monopoly is allowed to operate with impunity. Incomes and franchise valuations increase at other-worldly rates. Last year the revenue for the teams was near $24-Billion. Roger Goodell wants $30-Billion by the end of the decade. At the current rate it won’t take that long. Valuations for the franchises rose, get ready for this, last year by 31%. It’s barely comprehendible. One-third of the League has franchises valued at over $10-Billion. The combined valuation of franchises, including real estate holdings is just shy of $300-Billion. With all of this going on the greed continues unabated.

Major League Baseball is looking at the NFL in slack-jawed amazement. Their franchise valuations are crawling upward like an old fashioned “Widow and Orphan” stock. They want some of the same gravity-defying money action. The formula is complete media revenue sharing combined with a hard salary cap. It will take an upheaval to get those. There will be fights and factions aplenty. But, it looks like MLB is finally ready to bite the bullet.

Against all of that backdrop the League is fielding a diminished quality product. Who is going to stop them? There’s only one answer; themselves.

Chalk this Jalen Hurts episode into the “Near Miss” category. Serious organizations would dissect that issue in detail identifying what else could have gone wrong while implementing actions to prevent recurrence. Don’t bet the ranch that the League is doing that. Had that flight home from London taken a turn towards a medical emergency the NFL climate this week would have been unimaginable. There would have been lots of sweating going on in the Park Avenue offices. The media maelstrom from outside of the “Broadcast Partners” would have been unbearable.

Thankfully for Mr. Hurts the League got lucky. Hopefully it won’t happen again. Luck and Hope are not strategies, however.

Robots?

ESPN put together a six-part docu-series about retired Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban. THE ATHLETIC’s Matt Baker succinctly summed it up: “I turned on the first episode thinking Saban spent his Alabama career as a joyless robot who cared only about perfection, and I turned off the final episode thinking Saban spent his Alabama career as a joyless robot who cared only about perfection.” Saban is far from the only one employed in football who fits the description. Probably as an inexorable function the game has morphed into an enterprise where joy is not only eschewed, it’s loathed on a certain level. This is serious business, don’t you know.

Remember Jayden Daniels‘ Rookie year. He was out laughing and having a good time. One would think the reaction to that would be positive. It was in some quarters, but not in others. “Hey, get serious, Kid” was a comment that struck a nerve. Maybe some of that is driven by gambling. Read the most outrageously vitriolic of the commentariat through the lens of, “This guy just lost money on the game” and it makes more sense.

This all didn’t happen overnight. This first season without him it is hard to go a single week without thinking back on Sonny Jurgensen. Sonny was always about a good time. His smile was electric and frequently on display. He owned a Gold Jacket from the Hall of Fame. Tom Brady will share that honor as soon he is eligible. That, and the fact that they were both Quarterbacks are the only thing Sonny and Tom had in common. Brady was a joyless robot if ever there was one.

Charlie Weis used to have a gig on NFL Radio. He was Brady’s Offensive Coordinator for years in New England. Weis spent an entire “A” Block one day explaining the ins and outs of preparation during a week. The day would start with Tom in the building early. It would end at 10:00pm when Tom would send him emails with thoughts on the game plan. 10:00pm was “Lights Out.” Let me break some not-so-much-news: Sonny wasn’t studying game plans at 10:00pm. Now that Brady is in the booth he’s elaborated on some of his game prep. He held up a play call sheet during a broadcast. After explaining all the colors and boxes he went on to say his routine was to memorize the sheet, then write it down from memory to the tune of (his words) 1,000 times that week. That sounds like it’s close enough to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder territory to see the border signs.

Was football ever supposed to be such a monastic existence?

Saban and Brady aren’t stand-alones. Don’t underestimate their influences on the sport. Nick had a factory in Alabama. It was not only stocked with players. It also produced coaches in abundance that have spread throughout the various strata of the sport. They learned at the feet of automaton. It would be a tall task to avoid following suit. And, Brady is the “Greatest of All Time.” There are portions of two-generations worth of Quarterbacks that cut their teeth emulating that guy. Joyless Robots are to be found in abundance throughout the sport.

Finally, there are the athletes themselves. There is a coarsening of the culture involved with this incessant level of injuries. We all know the drill: Players kneel, the cart comes out, cue the soft music, and then fade to dark before the advertisement starts. The robots of the Jetsons’ imagery go to the shop for pieces/parts. Athletes go to the Operating Room. “It’s an ACL.” Shoulders shrug. But, that’s months on end of rehabilitation and pain. We are sufficiently numb to the humanity of it. At some point the whole situation begs the question: “Are we asking humans to do something they aren’t designed to do?” While there consider the League wants to add more games and more International games. It is too much?

The NFL is not alone in this. In baseball it has become a rite of passage to have surgery on the Ulnar Collateral Ligament of the pitching arm. Why is it so routine to the point that some youngsters are getting the surgery as a prophylactic? The answer is that modern pitching and the unaltered human arm are incompatible. So, is the fix to change methodologies and usage levels? Of course not. Get that surgery, Son.

When it’s all added up, and we’ve ignored the cost of simply watching games from the couch, the sport looks fabulous on the balance sheet. But, the view under the hood is more than a little troubling.

Games this Week

There are some interesting games this week. Chicago beat New England. Drake Maye continues to take on his inner Jameis Winston. The pick he threw in the End Zone is probably a felony in football crazy states like Texas. Chicago fan thinks this team is of Super Bowl timber. We’ll see. Right now Minnesota is on top of that Division with a Defense that is stunningly good and an Offense that isn’t much. Chicago is two-games back.

The Giants play the Texans. Houston has made the playoffs for the past two-years after starting 0-3. They’re trying to up the ante after going 0-4 to start the season. JJ McCarthy is trying to be the savior for the Giants. The Texans are 10.5-point favorites.

Ravens vs. Bengals could be a decent game. Ravens are a 1.5-point favorite.

Packers vs. Lions at 4:25 is big for both teams. The window feels like it is closing in Detroit. Losing this game would put them in a serious hole. The Packers responded nicely last week. Winning this game gets them into the conversation for the Division. At some point Minnesota is going to have to score some points. Lions favored by 3-points.

Chiefs/Seahawks is the Sunday Night game. Seattle has to get out their own way. This is a stiff test for the young Head Coach. If KC wins then the AFC goes through them. Seattle is favored by 3-points.

Finally, the biggie, Cowboys vs. Eagles on Monday Night Football. If Dallas can’t beat these guys then the hell that will be raised in Big D will be insane. This one will be tough to watch. Dallas favored by 4.5.