Opinion: A lot of bad football in the NFL

Here’s a fact that most casual NFL fans don’t know: last season, 71% of the NFL’s 32 teams finished with a 9-8 or below record. 

This means those few teams who did finish one game over .500 won just 52 percent of their games. Fifty-two percent was a failing grade when I was in school.

In old times, a .500 record would’ve gotten you fired.  Heck, a winning season used to get you fired.  Tampa Bay fired Tony Dungy in 2002 after finishing 9-7.  In 2011, Chicago fired Lovie Smith after finishing 10-6.  The Chargers – then in San Diego, where they were a whole lot better – fired Marty Schottenheimer after a 14-2 year in 2006.

Yes, 14-2.

Despite the abysmal records of 2022, just five head coaches and two general managers got fired.  Many of the teams that made the playoffs were terrible.  That same Buccaneers franchise that fired a Hall of Fame black man after a 9-7 season (so much for diversity!) got a home playoff game after finishing 8-9.  You know the league is bad when a sub-.500 team wins their division.

This season figures to be more of the same.  Four weeks into ‘23, the league is one hot mess: 68% of the teams are at 2-2 or below, and 10 teams are 1-3 or below.  There are as many unbeaten teams as there are winless teams.  The NFL is an entertaining league, but it is so because the teams are entertainingly bad.  Monday night’s Giants v. Seahawks game was a disaster; Troy Aikman and Joe Buck didn’t hide it.  The offensive line play is terrible, the quarterbacks are terrible, the tackling is terrible.  Even Bill Belichick debased himself last Sunday.

You couldn’t blame a critical observer for wandering if the teams are trying to lose.  The ending of the Colts-Ravens game two weeks ago is a terrific example.  Colts return man Isaiah McKenzie, a seventh-year vet, waved for a fair catch but allowed the ball to bounce inside the 10-yard line, forcing an eventual safety.  Where did he think he was on the field?  Evidently the Colts have veteran players on their roster who can’t find out where they are with a map.

Bad as that was, John Harbaugh – a former special teams coordinator – mismanaged the clock terribly.  His return man – Zay Flowers – decided to fair catch before the two-minute warning, essentially giving the Colts an extra timeout.  The offense managed to take just 22 seconds off the clock after going three-and-out.  The Ravens lost to a backup quarterback who is trying to make jean shorts hip again.

Hard as it may be to hear, these are all just the facts.  What’s causing this?  It could be the players – the late Mike Leach once lamented his players are “fat, dumb and entitled.”  Perhaps it could be an over-reliance on analytics in the play calling and draft process.  Perhaps it’s the influx of people getting hired right out of college to coaching and scouting positions without seasoning at the college or high school level. They used to have a saying in the scouting world: “25 for 25.”  That is, 25-year-old scouting assistants making $25,000.  Yet the league keeps hiring 22-year-olds who worked in a recruiting office for a year as an undergrad, where they spent most of their time in PhotoShop creating graphics, not a film room. 

Or maybe it’s because of the NFL’s fraternal nature. 

Either way, maybe it’s time for fresh perspectives, in both coaching and personnel.  Maybe these entry-level positions belong to people who have experience, who are qualified, who are knowledgeable about the game. 

Maybe it’s time to hire competent evaluators and play-callers who know what they’re doing. 

At a college game last week, I asked one NFL area scout why there are so few positions available on their team (they finished last season below .500, by the way).  “Not much movement,” this scout said.  Maybe that should change.  Seventy-one percent of the league at or below .500, and only two general managers lose their jobs?  How does this square with winning coaches and general managers getting fired in the past?

If these abysmal records continue, will the upcoming offseason be any different?  For the league’s sake, let’s hope so.  But it will depend on how much mediocrity – or suckocrity –  owners are willing to put up with.  Carl Reed, a 247Sports analyst commenting on the recent success of Colorado, wisely said: “The game is no longer about those guys who want to hang on to the old ways of doing business.  The game is for people who are dominating tomorrow.”  Let’s hope this applies to our game’s professional level, because too many are stuck in yesterday.