Remember back when there was defense in the NFL?
People got smacked around, bone crushing hits, receivers and defensive backs jockeying for position on a deep ball, games scores of 17-10 were commonplace. That is all gone now.
It has been replaced with, quarterbacks getting brushed lightly and a flag is thrown, defensive backs are forced to play zone, as opposed to man coverage, because the NFL has castrated DB’s, and games scores of 37-34 are commonplace.
I miss defense.
I’m not much into chess, but I know it to be a very cerebral game. Defensive and offensive coordinators used to play chess. Now they play checkers.
I realize why they made some rules (i.e. helmet to helmet tackles, hitting a prone player below the knees, etc…), and I do realize that they wanted to create more offense because, well, it’s exciting, but just like they wanted to amp up the offense they did it at the expense of the defense. It’s to a point now where it’s just too much.
If there wasn’t enough scoring before, there is too much now. Just like it was boring to have 17-10 games, it’s getting stale to have 40-37 games.
It used to be if a game ended with a final score of say 37-34 and your thought would be that that was a high scoring game.
Now a 37-34 score won’t even produce a blip on the radar.
The number of QB’s that have thrown for 4,000 yards has grown exponentially the last three decades.
1980’s had 14.
1990’s had 22.
2000’s had 46.
More than double the previous decade and more than the previous two decades combined!
How about this tidbit, the amount of teams that have scored 400+ points in a season increased from 30 in the 1990’s to 61 in the 2000’s. Double. Twice as many.
This isn’t an aberration either. In sports an aberration is a season, maybe two of something happening that shouldn’t, not a whole decade.
I think it’s just about time to slow these speeding bullet trains of offense down a bit.
It’s time for the NFL to grow back up from checkers and start playing chess again.
Don't Kid Yourself (sports edition) 