The NFL has a preseason problem because the product is both risible and detestable. It’s a football farce that affects the real games because preseason protected species spend the first couple of weeks of the regular season acclimating to game speed. The current preseason game ethos is unsatisfying and unsustainable. Either the name players have to play more or the NFL has to cut down the preseason schedule like an undrafted rookie.
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Patriots quarterback Drake Maye and the rest of the team’s presumed starters have remained in bubble wrap this preseason. They haven’t played a single snap entering Thursday’s preseason finale in Cleveland. Coach Mike Vrabel was noncommittal Monday when asked if the frontline players would log snaps.
A decade ago, it would’ve been unconscionable to think that one of the teams playing in the NFL’s regular-season kickoff game could enter that game with its players not having taken a game snap. Not anymore. The Seahawks, the Patriots’ opponents in the regular-season ribbon-cutter, haven’t played their top-shelf players, either. Rams coach Sean McVay habitually sits his frontline players during the preseason.
Since the NFL adopted a 17-game schedule in 2021, cutting the preseason from four games to three, the traditional routine has faded.
“Yes, it has changed, drastically,” said first-year Cardinals coach Mike LaFleur. “[In] 2016 in Atlanta, [we] played four preseason games, and that third game for the league was like the mock game.
“You went out and you played a whole half of football with your starters, offense, defense, and then actually came out in the second half and at least [got] what it felt like to go back inside and make some adjustments, then get your body and mind right to play that third quarter. And that was just kind of the league.
“We always would play our guys for two games … The league has evolved with it. I still don’t know if there is a right and wrong answer to it all.”
Coaches are control freaks by nature. That dovetails perfectly with the rise of the joint practice. Joint practices create healthy competition between teams where coaches can script situations to measure players while metering the level of contact.
The Patriots hosted three joint practices — one with the Colts and two with the Eagles. Before practicing with Philadelphia, Vrabel said that his ones would be able to get 28 to 30 reps each day, far more than in a preseason game.
“You get a lot of intensity. But you see a lot of different looks, and teams are running a lot more stuff than they would run in the preseason in the game, putting it on film,” Vrabel said. Preseason game plans are usually as plain as a manila envelope.
Joint practices represent a useful training simulation. Fans flock to them. But they aren’t the same as playing in a game setting with unbridled and unapologetic football physicality.
Vrabel acknowledged that in an interview on WEEI, pointing out that some of the Maye completions cheered by fans and charted by media members during practices would result in the quarterback peeling himself off the turf in a game.
Vrabel projects ambivalence. Monday, he defended the value of preseason games, citing elements such as live tackling and pushing piles that can’t be replicated.
Yet, following Saturday’s victory over the Eagles, he lamented the team’s depth and said, “We are doing everything that we can to keep our best players available.”
Foxborough Faithful of a certain age remember the team’s calamitous 1989 preseason finale when Hall of Famer Andre Tippett, defensive end Garin Veris, and cornerback Ronnie Lippett all suffered season-ending injuries.
Like everything in sports these days, there is an analytical impetus for joint practices replacing preseason games. You can’t fight Big Data.
“At the owners’ meetings, they talked about joint practices vs. playing in the preseason vs. not playing in the preseason,” said LaFleur.
“If you get two joint practices in, that’s the equivalent of playing in the two preseason games because it’s an amped-up environment … For some reason, the data says if you end up having those joint practices you have less injury risk going into those first four weeks of the season.”
This is the new normal. But it begs an existential question for preseason games: What’s their purpose? That gets emphasized when the NFL inevitably moves to an 18-game, two-preseason-game schedule.
Certainly, preseason contests are valuable for players trying to make a roster and a name for themselves. But their raison d’être is no longer to prepare for the regular season. It’s to generate revenue and audition for the bottom of the roster and practice squad.
Fine. Just market it accurately as NFL JV football.
End the preseason pretense.
Christopher L. Gasper is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at christopher.gasper@globe.com. Follow him @cgasper and on Instagram @cgaspersports.