- Hey everyone, thanks for joining us
for another Cracked Responds.
This week, we decided we would talk about the NFL Preseason
- It's a real bummer that so many people got hurt.
- Every year! - Starters!
- How many fantasy leagues were ruined
in the last two weeks?
- Well, here's the thing:
Don't draft that early.
Don't draft at the beginning of August.
That's the dumbest thing.
- My problem with the preseason is that
I still don't think that any of these injuries
are necessary.
For instance, if you're a Dolphins fan,
which means you're one of seven people watching
this video,
your quarterback situation got hosed.
You robbed the rest of the country from seeing Jay Cutler
comment on a Tannehill interception.
Which is all I wanted to see in the world.
- I want to check in at the booth every once in a while
and Cutler just has a cigarette in his mouth.
I disagree with you, though.
I think that the preseason is crucial.
- Crucial?
- Yeah, I think coaches get a sense of what people
can do on the team because there's real difference
between what you do in practice and what you do
in an actual game time decision.
- So you don't think that the system of people
trying to make the team is exploitative?
- Of course it bothers me. - Right.
- But I'm willing to look past it.
That's the nature of football,
that at a certain point you almost have to play injured
with the potential that you will get more injured.
I think these salaries are like $80,000 for those guys.
- Are they even that?
No way!
I want to distinguish it between other sports
and the way they do their practice squad thing.
- With football, I think it's necessary
because the season's so much shorter
that you don't really have those first few games
to work out the kinks,
and work out the growing pains.
- So preseason games are deciding between one guy
who is not going to keep his job longer than a year,
and the other guy who doesn't get to keep his job at all.
If there wasn't the preseason,
we could have had a moment where like,
"okay, it's third down, they're bringing in some new back.
"Who's that?"
And it's Jamaal Charles, and he catches a
ten yard screen pass and runs for sixty yards
and we find out a) that you have him,
and b) oh, my god, he's still got it.
That's way more fun!
- I think it's really helpful for the coaches,
not only because they can see who can perform,
but they're writing their playbooks right then,
and they're writing their playbooks for
the people they have on the field,
and they're seeing what works against another team,
and you can't do that with your own defense.
- That's true.
But to me, that is not necessary in the NFL.
The NFL makes enough money that they're not
losing any money if they just sign people to contracts.
If they were just told "you must make a 50 man roster"
and you have to start that roster at the beginning of camp,
and you have to take risks to lock up
the guys you know are good or think are good,
and then live with that all year.
They can totally do it.
- You do have somebody who's brand new,
who came out of nowhere,
and because you didn't have the preseason to actually
see them perform suddenly the very first game of the season,
they're just lighting it up.
- Think how insane that is! - Yeah, that's pretty great.
- That's super exciting.
Another reason I think the preseason exists
is now to generate the drama around contract disputes.
La'Veon Bell didn't go to camp this year.
Now we're all going to find out real quick
whether he needed to go to camp or not.
They have him in practice,
they can see if he's worth the money
that they want to pay him during this dispute,
or he might get injured,
so they can save some money there if they need to,
whereas he knows if he doesn't show up,
they have to pay up.
That's the only negotiating tactic NFL players even have.
- Yeah, I'm trying to think how the way they're doing it
right now is beneficial to us and there's just,
as a fan, there's really not much to it.
Other than, you make sure you're not carrying
somebody who just had their cliff year last year.
- But I want NFL teams to have to carry a Greg Oden.
(laughter)
I want that to happen!
Oh my god, he's going to be throwing (bleep) watermelons
out there and they have to pay him.
That's what I want!
Most of them, they get cut before they really decline
enough that they don't deserve to play in the NFL anymore.
- Or they get irrevocably injured.
- I'm not ready to give up on the NFL yet.
You know, put some childproofing on these locks, whatever,
so I don't have to confront the corruption
and the terrible cost of this game.
- Every single year.
- Let's not have it, so I don't have to think about it.
- That's the detriment of preseason, too.
Is that it makes you aware of everything
that's been going on.
Suddenly, now you've got these elements of these guys
that are pretty dark.
The NFL is constantly trying to do this pageantry
to try and keep your mind off the fact
that this is a really dark institution.
- Right, that it's like bad all the way
from Pop Warner up.
It's a corrosive, dark sport.
- They don't even give you time to think during half-time
about it.
No, no, no, Red Hot Chili Peppers, man.
- Should I google NFL hits on my phone
and see what comes up?
- Yeah, and it looks like they get taken advantage of
by the managers constantly.
These are basically just essentially workhorse human beings.
Do I hate this game?
- Maybe I"ll look into that cheerleader's story,
oh, she's not paid minimum wage?
(laughter)
- Those cheerleaders, yeah, they have it made.
They have it made.
Oh, wait, they get $10 an hour.
Oh, God.
- There's going to be a year,
and I think we both know it's coming,
where it's like I just don't want to be a bad person.
- Some people have already had it.
There are people I know personally
who are football fans who are just not following this year
because of everything that's happened.
They don't want to support the sport anymore.
I think that's really admirable.
I can't help it.
- I can't yet either.
Fantasy Football's so fun.
- And it makes up so much of my fall.
I mean the fall essentially is a dismal time of year
and things aren't going great with the country right now,
(laughter)
- I really need this.
- There's a lot of things to look down on,
and football is this one thing where if I just ignore
all the bad parts, I can just pretend like
it was when I was a child
and I was watching it with my dad and my brother.
It's that all over again.
- This is our plea to America to the NFL.
Save your sport.
Don't have a preseason.
We are coming to a place where it's like
you can't have a moral high ground about somethings
and not everything and it's getting
hard in the NFL.
So anyway, cancel the preseason so we can still watch the
sport.
Right? - Yeah.