2016 NFL Season

[Senator Clay Davis]

Seattle and Minnesota have a combined two losses, yet you can't help but feel they're both going to crash and burn because their offensive lines will not be able to protect the QB. Great defenses are nice, but it's still 2016 and you still need a quality QB. If they can't figure out their OLine issues they could both end up wasting great defenses with Shaun Hill and Trevone Boykin as their QBs for big chunks of the season.

[Flabbibulin]

Other than sports media types, who on earth is interested in these endless discussions on sports shows about why NFL ratings are dropping?? That is a discussion for the league and media to have among themselves as far as I'm concerned.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Because there's only two possible reasons for the ratings decline (anthem protests or declining quality of product), and they are both worth talking about. Plus if this is a real problem and not a blip, it's going to hold big implications on the salary cap down the road.

[Flabbibulin]

We are talking about a month or two into the season and we would need to see this trend for years to have an impact on salaries. And what difference would it make if the salary cap goes down across the board- how are fans harmed by that as far as the quality of play? Each team would presumably be affected equally and it is the players that would suffer, not us. There isn't exactly another league out there for elite football players to go to.

[Senator Clay Davis]

The league is also incredibly boring to discuss right now. NE-DEN will be the AFC Title game so there's nothing interesting to discuss in the AFC. NFC is more interesting, but we just watched an utterly atrocious game between two of its best teams. NFL is just in a bad rut right now, the on field product is awful so there's not much worth talking about there. League has serious problems right now that are worth discussing, and they're more interesting than the on field product. NFL should continue to be grateful it has fantasy and gambling or it's ratings would be worse than the NBA and then we'd have something real interesting to talk about.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

The league is also incredibly boring to discuss right now. NE-DEN will be the AFC Title game so there's nothing interesting to discuss in the AFC. NFC is more interesting, but we just watched an utterly atrocious game between two of its best teams. NFL is just in a bad rut right now, the on field product is awful so there's not much worth talking about there. League has serious problems right now that are worth discussing, and they're more interesting than the on field product. NFL should continue to be grateful it has fantasy and gambling or it's ratings would be worse than the NBA and then we'd have something real interesting to talk about.

A big team like the Cowboys could save this entire season if they go on a run.

[Senator Clay Davis]

This season is pretty much unsalvagable. NFL needs to figure out how to proceed going forward, but this season there's 30% declines across the board for ratings, and that's with the Cowboys at 5-1. NFL has serious problems one way or another, whether it's total driven by an anti-Kaepernick/protest movement, or if people are just tired of the declining quality of the league. But either of those are massive problems for the league if they are the driver in the decline.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

Because there's only two possible reasons for the ratings decline (anthem protests or declining quality of product), and they are both worth talking about. Plus if this is a real problem and not a blip, it's going to hold big implications on the salary cap down the road.

As a third possible reason, and the one that applies to me is the games are so flipping boring to watch because they drag on forever. There's absolutely no reason a game has to run over three hours, and should probably be closer to 2 1/2.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

Seattle and Minnesota have a combined two losses, yet you can't help but feel they're both going to crash and burn because their offensive lines will not be able to protect the QB. Great defenses are nice, but it's still 2016 and you still need a quality QB. If they can't figure out their OLine issues they could both end up wasting great defenses with Shaun Hill and Trevone Boykin as their QBs for big chunks of the season.

The big problem is that it's a weak O line combined with a hobbled Russell Wilson, who is far less effective without the threat of an option to scramble. It's always been the case that the risk of him escaping the pocket completely changes how you have to play against him.

In his current state, you pretty much know what he's going to do, and he's not great at it. Which means they have to run Michael up the middle all the time, which limits his effectiveness in turn... I'm not totally sure that Boykin would be much of a step down.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

This season is pretty much unsalvagable. NFL needs to figure out how to proceed going forward, but this season there's 30% declines across the board for ratings, and that's with the Cowboys at 5-1. NFL has serious problems one way or another, whether it's total driven by an anti-Kaepernick/protest movement, or if people are just tired of the declining quality of the league. But either of those are massive problems for the league if they are the driver in the decline.

The Thursday night game is a problem. The London at 7:30am is also a dumb idea. With the London game there are 6 separate blocks of NFL games per week. Who's going to sit through all of those? It's like splitting the vote so the same number of people might be watching but just split over different games.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Over saturation is definitely a major problem for the NFL, but it's not going away if the goal of the league really is to get to $25 billion in revenue by 2028. More game blocks = more ability to charge. So again we'll see how the NFL deals with this.

Originally Posted by Lubicon

As a third possible reason, and the one that applies to me is the games are so flipping boring to watch because they drag on forever. There's absolutely no reason a game has to run over three hours, and should probably be closer to 2 1/2.

I view this as being part of the "quality of the product". There's really not that many more commercials now than there was say 10 years ago, but you notice there are more commercials because the actual games keep getting worse. People can hate ads on jerseys and on the field, but if that's what it'll take to get games into the 2hr 20 minute range, I'll take them tomorrow.

[troutman]

Maybe the problem is that it is the same 6-8 teams by and large, that make the final four every year? Not too many surprises or changing fortunes.

[Knut]

Originally Posted by troutman

Maybe the problem is that it is the same 6-8 teams by and large, that make the final four every year? Not too many surprises or changing fortunes.

How have Baseball's ratings been now that there seems to be new teams in the playoffs every year ? That would probably be a good comparable. For years it was the same teams in baseball fighting it out.

[Sylvanfan]

The other option is to analyze behavior trends in the population and the impacts that new media is having on what is becoming a dinosaur in TV. How many people are still watching TV? How many are getting their media via other means now? Is the NFL tracking or managing how it sells the games online?

I don't think Millennials are going to be bothered to watch 3 hours of football on T.V. the same way an old codger like me would. They're likely happier to watch the game afterwards that's condensed to less than an hour without commercials, and cutting out a lot of the dead space. I see my 6 year old kid...he will only watch T.V. if the IPad is dead, or he's not allowed to watch the IPad...he's far more interested in youtube videos that he can change around than what's offered on T.V.

I've even found that somehow the NFL manages to get all their broadcasts to commercial at the same time. This goes back well over 20 years to when I was a teen ager and my Dad sold illegal satellite dish cards and we had Sunday Ticket. 8 games, and 6 would be at commercial break.

I have the T.V. on football on Sunday...but I tune in and out as I do other stuff around the house. Very seldom that I sit down and engage into the actual viewing of the game for more than 5 continual minutes. I mean I can grab my piece of wood...mark and measure it...watch a play. Go out make sure the saw is good to go...come in watch another play...cut the piece of wood. Come in and watch the next play. That's pretty much how most of these games flow.

With PVR's and online media...really it's lousy live viewing a lot of the time. The more efficient use of time is to record and watch after and cut out the dead space. I suspect more and more of us are crunched for time these days, so taking 8 hours to watch football impacts the rest of our week a lot more than condensing it down to 2 hours and getting our weekly meal prep or whatever other things we have going on done.

[Knut]

There might be a Barbara Streisand Effect to the promotion of Fantasy football as well. With all the fantasy options a lot of people may just be following live from their Ipads/iphones. It is to the point that people are following specific players instead of teams.

[habernac]

Even my 70 year old Dad PVRs the game and starts it an hour later. He can't stand sitting through 8000 commercials, reviewing a call, etc.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Sylvanfan

The other option is to analyze behavior trends in the population and the impacts that new media is having on what is becoming a dinosaur in TV. How many people are still watching TV? How many are getting their media via other means now? Is the NFL tracking or managing how it sells the games online?

I don't think Millennials are going to be bothered to watch 3 hours of football on T.V. the same way an old codger like me would. They're likely happier to watch the game afterwards that's condensed to less than an hour without commercials, and cutting out a lot of the dead space. I see my 6 year old kid...he will only watch T.V. if the IPad is dead, or he's not allowed to watch the IPad...he's far more interested in youtube videos that he can change around than what's offered on T.V.

I've even found that somehow the NFL manages to get all their broadcasts to commercial at the same time. This goes back well over 20 years to when I was a teen ager and my Dad sold illegal satellite dish cards and we had Sunday Ticket. 8 games, and 6 would be at commercial break.

I have the T.V. on football on Sunday...but I tune in and out as I do other stuff around the house. Very seldom that I sit down and engage into the actual viewing of the game for more than 5 continual minutes. I mean I can grab my piece of wood...mark and measure it...watch a play. Go out make sure the saw is good to go...come in watch another play...cut the piece of wood. Come in and watch the next play. That's pretty much how most of these games flow.

With PVR's and online media...really it's lousy live viewing a lot of the time. The more efficient use of time is to record and watch after and cut out the dead space. I suspect more and more of us are crunched for time these days, so taking 8 hours to watch football impacts the rest of our week a lot more than condensing it down to 2 hours and getting our weekly meal prep or whatever other things we have going on done.

To me this is the real concern for sports in general. Kids have so many options today that they just don't watch sports. Its the same across the board I think where kids aren't watching sports like "we" did growing up. My kids have basically zero interest in sports teams and professional clubs because there are so many options for them to do and see other things. I can't imagine that they'll spend money on tickets and merchandise when they otherwise could.

And the NFL is the ultimate TV sport. Play happens, lots of time for a replay and explaining what you just saw and then onto the next play. Its basically made for TV...which is great when everyone watches TV. Only less and less people are actually doing that now.

[GirlySports]

We need to make our kids watch tv

[ResAlien]

Denver starting like they ended last week, stupid penalties on 3rd down costing them first downs.

Sweet, that's twice now. Okung's head is firmly inserted in his arse.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Osweiler getting $18 million per and $37 million guaranteed ha gotta be the all-time heist. I think even noodle arm would still be more accurate if he were playing.