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NFL Pre-Season Week Five: Why NFL Week 17 Is Now the Fifth Preseason Game
Published: January 4, 2010
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For many years we have watched the NFL season go through its 17 week progression, and seemingly every year a hot button issue will come up that causes a bit of controversy. It has been widely known that week 17 in the NFL was a hit or miss scenario in terms of starters playing or sitting depending on the teams situation.
The controversy was amped up this year when the Colts sat their starters in week 16, giving up on the chance to have an undefeated record. Now many articles have written about whether the Colts were right wrong, that issue is in the past and they will be judged on what happens to them in the playoffs.
Week 17 in the NFL has become preseason week five, were we get to see the dust taken off of players like Billy Volek, Curtis Painter, and J.T. O’Sullivan. It’s the preseason all over again, and sure you have some teams that don’t roll out the backups because they do have something to play for. There are several reasons why this is bad for the NFL, and Roger Goodell knows full well that this is a problem he needs to address.
This week during the Steelers vs. Dolphins game Goodell was interviewed, and said that he wants the competition committee to look at this issue and see if they can come up with a solution. He is even floating incentives like extra draft picks for teams to play their starters, as he does not believe he can punish teams for doing it and I agree with him in that regard.
The reason this is a big issue stems from the fact that preseason games are labeled just that: preseason. So when a fan attends the game they expect to see Charlie Whitehurst, Mark Brunell, and Brian Hoyer in the game. But they pay full price for expensive tickets to see an NFL regular season game, and they show up and see all the backups playing and the stars on the sideline with their arms folded.
I know that many will say the fans should know it’s week 17 and there is a chance the starters will not play, but what about people who may be Redskins fans that live in San Diego and they purchased tickets for the week 17 game at the beginning of the season. They wait all year too see Phillip Rivers and company come to Houston so they can see them play, and they show up and get Billy Volek instead.
This is against the whole spirit of competition, and the fact that season ticket holders are getting ripped off for a game that season. With the cost of tickets and PSL’s (personal seat licenses) added on top of that, should the team not put their best on the field every game?
Many will point to the Wes Welker injury from this past Sunday, and say that’s why you rest your starters to avoid injury. That reasoning does not hold much weight, injuries are part of the game, and part of the reason we love the NFL so much. I wonder how many times over the last 20 seasons anyone can name players who were seriously injured in a meaningless week 17 game? I would gather to say it is less than the number who did not get injured, so the odds are that players will not get hurt.
It is impossible to predict when injuries are going to happen both on and off the field, but those players are paid to be on the field and take all the risks that come with it. Teams hardly spend time developing backups anymore it seems, they rely so much on their starters that when one of them goes down the team is finished.
Then you have the NY Jets situation where they Colts and Bengals put up less than stellar efforts and put them in the playoffs after even their own coach declared them dead. During the Colts vs. Jets game you could see the fans wanted them to go for perfection, and the Buffalo game this week was a joke as Colts starters were drinking Coffee on the sidelines.
I think a possible solution to this problem is to schedule all division games over the last nine weeks of the season, that way the division races would be in doubt until later in the year. Sure teams could still go 14-0 and do the same thing, but most of the time the playoff picture does not start to shape up until most of the division races have concluded.
It will be interesting to see what the competition committee comes up with, but I doubt it will be anything substantial that will solve this problem. With the NFL talking about expanding to 18 games the problem will only get worse, as coaches will have to find a way to get their players through more grueling weeks of games without much of a break.
Maybe I am in the minority that sees this as a problem, but watching the final week of the season is always potluck and with regional telecasts you can’t choose to watch the “good” game unless you have Direct TV. If I spend time and money to watch an NFL game I want to see NFL football, and not a watered down game where one team could care less if they win or lose.
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