NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s talking about shortening the preseason again, but the question may be whether his bosses are interested in it.
According to Mark Maske of the Washington Post, “there does not seem to be great urgency among the owners to shorten the preseason,” regardless of Goodell’s recent remarks.
Part of the reason some owners seem to hesitant to push for it may be that there’s less pushback from fans about the reduced quality of the games, because they’re not (necessarily) paying as much for them. With more teams adopting variable pricing — in which preseason games cost less and the difference is inevitably made up elsewhere — the pressure is less.
Cowboys executive Stephen Jones said earlier in training camp that he thinks the sport can live with the current length of the preseason, given that shell game of ticket costs.
“I don’t know that we need any more games in terms of the overall package, the fact that you play 20 games in a season,” Cowboys executive Stephen Jones said. “The way I look at preseason is, because we’ve changed the way we price tickets now . . . I don’t think it’s as big a deal.”
Jones pointed to the expanded reps they were able to give young players this year with a fifth preseason game, and said that was important for a guy such as Jaylon Smith coming off injuries.
“We’ll be the first to tell you our coaching staff, our young players, us as ownership, our scouting department are thrilled we have five games. . . . All these young players need reps and we need to see who can contribute,” Jones said. “You’re not gonna be seeing a whole lot of Jason Witten in these early preseason games. And then everybody says, ‘Oh, that’s not good for the product because they’re not seeing the best.’ Part of getting to the best product when you hit the regular season is developing these young guys so that when you do start Day 1 that you have the very best product you can put out on the field.
“And if you don’t give these rookies and these young players like Jaylon Smith the opportunity to really get . . . his feet wet, get out there and play, then you’re not gonna have the best product on the field when we play the Giants in Week 1 [of the regular season]. . . . To me, there’s some excitement there and if you variable-price and figure that out, then I don’t see the issue.”
Charging a little less might pacify the paying customers, but players likely still hate it. But until they’re ready to trade fewer preseason games for more games in the regular season or postseason, the 16-4 arrangement may not change anytime soon.