The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

Watched the first half of the Hall of Fame Game.   TBH, it was pretty basic and boring.   I didn't expect much because it was preseason, but for nearly every starter to be held out of the game says a lot.  Especially the #1 overall draft pick Caleb Williams who needed the work.  Not to mention that the fans who paid to come to the game to see their favorite stars were sold way short.  

This is exactly why I don't consider football officially back. I'm glad it is closer though.

Preseason is a farce and should be eradicated.

I agree.   Have controlled scrimmages instead of actual games.   Have the Hall of Fame Game so as not to break tradition, but do it halfway through training camp, and the teams with the top two draft picks should be the ones playing.   That way everyone can see the two new rookies on display.

Preseason is about preparing for the season.  The problem is people expect way too much from it.  It is not about seeing your favorite starts or entertaining football games.  It is about allowing coaches and GMs a tool to evaluate players during game conditions. 

It absolutely should not be eradicated.  Ticket prices for preseason games should be a third of what a regular season game costs. 

I tuned in for a few drives.  I usually like to catch the hof game
. Nice way to mark the beginning of the end of summer, and I can’t wait because it’s hot.

But they're not, and therein lies the problem.   Preseason ticket prices are the same as regular season and fans who buy season tickets are forced to take the preseason games at full price.   So as a result, fans want to see their favorite stars and coaches are compelled to play them for at least one drive if not a full quarter.   They need to do away with all that.   Controlled scrimmages are the key, and allow fans to attend

Why should preseason tickets be cheaper if they are selling them just fine at full price?

They are only selling because of the forced purchase with season tickets. I would say single game purchase is lacking.

I reject that this is for evaluation anymore.  Maybe for a couple of guys on the edge of the roster, but these decisions are made in practice and scrimmages.  Selling this subpar thing as a product is pretty lame.

Whatever, though -- I don't care.  I'm not paying for it.

I agree with you as far as it being a product, but as far as evaluation of players goes, I don't agree I think there's a lot that can be learned by watching how players perform in an actual game as opposed to practice. There are guys that show up on game day and not in practice and that's really valuable information for players new to the league. Veterans it's not that valuable because you can probably already see that from previous playing experience in games.

I don't want to do away with pre-season games, I actually enjoy watching them on TV, but I would never pay to watch a game.

The guys that play in those last few games are all cut anyway.

We know who's gonna be on the team -- those guys don't really play.
The ones on the bubble, from all I can tell, are pretty much known and then you throw some guys out there to fight for scraps on the practice squad.

I'm not saying it has literal zero value.  But I think the value that it provides as opposed to say, a scrimmage, is negligible.  And it certainly isn't worth charging full-priced MANDATORY tickets for.

Most don't make the initial roster, no but a lot of them are on the practice squads of teams and then eventually make it onto the roster. There's still a lot of value in being able to evaluate those players. Injuries are a part of the game and the practice squad is an important tool throughout the year.

Well we all know this is BS, but that's just the cost of doing business. If it wasn't the NFL you couldn't do this, but it is the NFL so they get away with it. That's just life.

No doubt, but are we really saying that we have to have live games with a crowd to determine who are best for the practice squad?  We could just do this with practices and scrimmages.  We are already pushing these injuries to the limit -- adding more meaningless games seems to do more harm than good.

The reality is that most preaseason tickets are then resold online and make a portion of that money back or they are just given away to people that can't afford to actually make it to a game. The people at these games know exactly what they are getting.

The NFL could certainly throw in the preseason games for free, but then they would just charge more for the seasonal tickets. What difference does it make? Zero. It's a gimmick. Everyone knows exactly what it is. I don't see why anyone really cares. It's just something to complain about like it really makes a difference when it doesn't.

You never heard of the term gamer? There are those guys that just get hyped for games and they ALWAYS look better under game conditions than they do in practice or scrimmage. And there's the reverse, guys that practice well and then don't show up for games. This is why they play the games. To see the difference and yeah as fas as I know there's no way to know if a guy is a gamer or not unless you actually have a game. Games are an important evaluation tool. Certainly it's not the only tool, but there's value there. There's no denying that.

If you agree with that idea than the only difference between you and I is whether we need to know this about the practice squad players or not and I would argue that the practice squad could be the difference between playoffs or not for some teams. Yeah, I think it's important. There's WAY too much emphasis by fans placed on the starting 22 and not nearly enough placed on the rest of the roster. For the coaches, it's the exact opposite in my humble opinion.

I'll go one step further and say traditionally Miami has been one of those teams that have as good or better starting 22 as the next team but then fail to make the playoffs when the starting 22 aren't on the field because of injuries. If the backups and practice squad were better, they may have made the playoffs some years where they didn't. That's just my opinion.

I mean, OK, but so what?  Even if every person in the stadium is a season ticket holder that was "forced" to buy the preseason tickets, if they're happy with the numbers then there's no need to lower the price.

As Pappy suggested, would it make you feel any better if preseason games were "free" for season ticket holders but they raised the price on season tickets?  The reason they don't do this now is it would obliterate the retail market for preseason tickets: season ticket holders would scalp their preseason tickets for pennies on the dollar because they were "free," in a way that they won't if they "paid" for preseason tickets.

I never voiced any opinion regarding the price. I merely pointed out that the sales number is propped up by the mandatory sales.

They're already doing that.   I got four seats to a Dolphins-Bucs preseason game for $10 each on StubHub.  Fact is, the season ticket holders don't want to go to those games so they sell them off real cheap.   

The point is that if they gave away those seats for free then no one would actually pay $10 for them on StubHub. You would expect the owner of those tickets to give them away for free. Right?

You get the tickets at a fair price and the NFL gets people in the stands. So the system works even if it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Not only that, if you didn't have to pay for the preseason tickets, then there would be a bunch of people who simply wouldn't show up to preseason games because "they're free."  You can see it just from the complaints in this thread: when you "pay" full price for a preseason game, you're more likely to feel like you want to get your money's worth by using them (or selling them to someone who uses them).  But if they're free, who cares?  Throw them in the trash.

The NFL should play ALL preseason games internationally, but stop playing regular season games internationally. 

To minimize travel, pick 8 cities or regional areas and send 4 teams each. 

This a similarity approach to how some European soccer leagues work. 

Nah, that's crazy. You want to be able to train at your own facilities. One of the advantages of playing for Miami is their training facilities and pre-season is a key time for that. Don't think many owners would be on board with that idea.

I would say more preseason games internationally would be a good thing.   Especially if they go to 18 regular season games and 2 preseason games.  It would be easy to hold the games two weeks apart to allow for travel and recovery, assuming training camp is the same length of time.

It would involve the model that use to be quite popular of holding training camp off site.  Technology is quite mobile and world class training facilities exist worldwide.

That's not my opinion. Actually I think the Dolphins training facility is quite unique and perhaps unmatched in the NFL. It's frequently mentioned as a reason that players want to play in Miami over other teams among other things. Perhaps some teams would rather train away from their own training facilities like perhaps Kansas City? My understanding is their training facilities are among the worst in the league.

Now it’s officially back.

Decent start for KC. I wish another team would have drafted Worthy before they did that’s gonna be a dangerous combination, but otherwise it wasn’t a peak Mahomes performance.

I feel for Lamar but he missed some wide open passes and his limitations as a passer are clearly there. Once he loses his edge physically I don’t see him lasting too much longer.