RAND: NFL can't catch a break…and doesn't want one

Is it just me, or did you miss the off-season, too?
As the Chiefs get ready to fly to River Falls on Wednesday, it seems like we went from the Super Bowl into free agency, into the draft, into mini-camps and off-season workouts and into training camp. Oh, there were probably a few dead weeks here and there but you had to be paying close attention to spot them. - NFL Football -
There are obvious reasons for this steady flow of pro football. The NFL wants to maximize off-season interest to keep fans paying attention and buying tickets. The coaches would much rather have their players on the practice field than be pretending to enjoy themselves on vacation while they worry because their players aren’t on the practice field. And the news media has a football-hungry public to feed. Considering that the alternatives include poker and bass fishing on ESPN, the media could do worse than provide saturation coverage about where Ty Law might land this season. - NFL Football -
The only people who’d like a longer off-season are the players. But as long as the salary cap keeps going up, they won’t object too loudly.
Now there’s nothing wrong with football 24/7. It’s not illegal, immoral or fattening. The only danger is if we start making too much of relatively meaningless developments.
The off-season’s still the off-season, no matter how much we see of it. And training camp is still training camp, no matter how much the players may be grunting and groaning. The pre-season’s still the exhibition season, even if the Chiefs go undefeated, or winless, for that matter. And the regular season is still all that really counts, even if it sometimes it seems like an all-too-brief interlude between off-seasons. - NFL Football -
Admittedly, each phase of the off-season becomes increasingly important. Training camp means more than the mini-camps and pre-season games mean more than training camp drills. But they’re all just appetizers.
It’s human nature to become fixated on what’s in front of us instead of down the road. So every rookie who gets rave reviews from the head coach in off-season workouts tends to get overrated. Most contract holdouts get way more attention than they deserve. And every big play in a pre-season game becomes a bigger highlight than it should be.
It’s also human nature to forget that 31 other teams have just as short an off-season as do the Chiefs. So all that extra work doesn’t help much unless Dick Vermeil and his staff are managing their time better than the opposition. - NFL Football -
Except for major injuries to key players, I can think of just a few instances where a team’s training camp or pre-season performance provided a strong clue to a regular-season finish. And even injuries can be misleading. Remember when everybody, except Vermeil, thought the Rams were toast after quarterback Trent Green went down in the summer of 1999? Then Kurt Warner led the Rams to the Super Bowl title. - NFL Football -
Oh, you’ll often hear coaches or players attribute a Super Bowl victory or a terrible meltdown to off-season developments the previous year. But that’s usually in hindsight. Except when the hub of an offense, like Ricky Williams, walks out just before training camp and sends his team into an unstoppable downward spiral.
The off-season is best tasted but not swallowed. There’s nothing wrong with going along for the ride from February until September. Just make sure that you don’t make too much of it.

Jonathan Rand