The League as a whole has gotten too soft. Most teams are so scared of injury that they bubble wrap their starters in preseason so it's only logical that it takes until Mid October for them to round into form. "September is basically training camp"- Bill Belichick
Used to be, starters played a series,maybe two in game 1 and then maybe a quarter in game 2. Then it was a whole half and a series after half in game three and then game 4 was for the depth players. The quality of play was better in September back then. Pretty crappy now.
But they want these teams playing 17 games now with the same archaic roster rules and limits of the last 40 years because although ownership wants more money, they still don't want to pay for depth.
The minimum thing I want to see in preseason is competence. Can you do the basics. None of that was on display last night.
I think you make a really good point about the roster rules. But here's the rub: the NFLPA does NOT want the rosters expanded, because that means the current players in the league will get less of the pie. So the players have some culpability in this.
What has happened is every year the pie gets bigger, due to TV contracts, merch sales, whatever. The basics of how the salary cap for each team is set is (Total League Revenue/2)/32. In other words, total projected league revenue, and the players get ~50% of that, the owners/teams get the other 50%. (It's a little less, but let's just keep the math simple.
Then they break that by the 32 teams, and you have the salary cap per team.
And because the pie keeps getting bigger, and the number of people eating stays the same, that's why you can have a $60m AAV QB.
If the NFLPA was to relent and allow 10 more players on the roster, then that would automatically decrease the size of the slices of pie for each of the current players.
So we end up with what we end up with. There have been a few tweaks to the rules, for example expanded practice squads, eligibility to be on the practice squad, and practice squad elevations. All of these are mechanisms to get around expanding rosters.
What the NFPA wants to do is expand the rosters and therefore take a larger proportion of the overall revenue. Which some could argue would be fair. The owners do not want to give up a higher percentage of revenue, because they are arguing costs running the team, everything from stadium lease costs and maintenance, salaries for coaches and other team personnel and all kinds of other things are also growing proportionally.
So there's the stalemate. And we end up with what we have.
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