I'm ready for some football

Oh baby, I am so geeked for the regular season to start. August was a nice warm-up, both for the players and for me. Before I move onto some of the larger things I want to get to, I have a quick thought about the preseason.

General consensus among fans and media is that the four preseason games are essentially worthless, because (a) the wins/losses don’t count for anything meaningful, and (b) the stars don’t play. I can’t refute either of those points because they’re absolutely true. However, the preseason has to be watched for what it is – a tune up for regular season and, more relevantly, a chance for organizations to establish depth charts for the season. I know, I know - “Depth charts!?!” I know it’s not as sexy as MNF in December, but hear this out.

First, the football season is already the perfect length. Pro Baseball and Basketball both have excruciatingly long seasons – six regular season months plus one post season month for baseball, five-plus regular season months plus two post season months for Basketball. Football is short and sweet – four months for the regular season, one month for the post season. Don’t argue for 20 regular season games. 17 or 18 may be tolerable, but that would still leave you with 2 or 3 preseason games, which have to be watched through a different lens, that of player evaluation.

So why is player evaluation worth following? Well, realistically, that’s exactly what training camp is for. Going into camp, the majority of the starting spots will be set. The positions up for grabs are the second and third string spots, usually filled by players you’ve heard very little about, either just out of college, trying to move up off the practice squad, or just cut from another team and trying to stay in the league. How many stories can you read about Peyton Manning, Terrell Owens, LaDainian Tomlinson, or pretty much any other star in the league that you already know inside and out? Preseason is all about finding the (relatively) little guy that has essentially no chance of making the team and rooting for him anyway in the final preseason game.

My favorite story of this most-recent preseason was that of C.J. Wallace, undrafted free agent out of the University of Washington, who beat out Michael Boulware for the last spot in Seattle’s secondary. That boy played his tail off in the opportunities given to him, and all he did was make plays. I found myself pulling for him because of his Seattle (UW) connections, but ultimately was won over by watching him put out the effort he did. Two Saturdays I found myself refreshing the News Tribune’s Seahawks blog every minute, waiting for the Seahawks cuts to be posted, and when I finally saw that Wallace had made the team I felt about as good as I would after a Seahawks victory. That’s how you enjoy the preseason.

Of course, now the rosters are set, and it’s time to move onto big boy football, where all that matters are wins and losses, and every team shoots for one thing – the Vince Lombardi trophy. I’m not a big fantasy guy, so I’m not going to follow individual performances for that sake. I’m just going to follow the teams as they move towards the playoffs, and ultimately the Super Bowl. This means my postings will be heavily weighted towards the top-half of the leagued.

With that said, here’s what I’ve got planned for the next few days: I’m going to preview and rank the AFC and NFC separately, as it seems kind of pointless to put them all together when their playoff brackets are separate. It doesn’t matter if the best NFC team is only, say, fifth best overall (as so many power rankings currently have them), the NFC still gets one team in the Super Bowl. So, I’ll do the NFC today, AFC tomorrow, and then do some general thoughts on how the season could play out. I haven’t exactly worked out how I want to structure my posts throughout the week (I’d like a big Monday observation column, Saturday preview, Tuesday MNF observation, etc), but I’ll work that out. Now, here comes the NFC.