Today’s Phinsider Question of the Day: What happened to the new player honeymoon in the NFL that we and the players used to enjoy? And on honeymoon, I speak of years gone by, long ago, when die-hard NFL fans understood that it was very unlikely that he would make the world shine from day one when you designed a man. Running backs can usually be an influence from the start, but with time and understanding, they even improve as their careers evolve with the exception of injuries, and virtually any position is a potential big impact player in the first year, though this player is just phenomenally talented and just happens to have the “it factor”. But sometimes the kids who come out like gangbusters in the first year just seem to fall off a cliff by the second or third year and never make it back to what they were in the first year, let alone what the fan base was about a particular one Time believed. Rookies of the Year sometimes just end up as busts in the long run, and the guy that nobody noticed in the first year is the one who ends up in the Hall of Fame. Hence the difficult dynamic is choosing the right people in the design. Even the very best NFL GMs have an epic failure somewhere along the way.
Then there are these guys who come in and fight with all the fanfare of a new baby in your family. They have difficulty understanding the more complicated systems in the NFL, the pace of play in the NFL, and / or they are just physically struggling to master the more advanced techniques of playing in the NFL and being able to commit offenses and defenses to read and to know their respective task on this basis. Some, for whatever reason, never get it. They jump around the league for a couple of years if they’re lucky and then they’re either out of the league selling cars or showing up on the crappy pre-pre-game show on Sundays for the actual pre-game show . Then there are those who turn out to be good for great players after two or three seasons if they have been lucky enough to be with the same coaches, or at least in the same system. Then there are the players who fight like hell with their first team, known as busts, simply cut off from their drawing team or traded in for a sack of peanuts, and then come on stage as one of the best in their position. I haven’t counted the number of times this has happened to our own Miami Dolphins.
But back to the question of the day. Why are fans so willing these days to write off a player after their first season? The player could come from a basic system and have never seen anything as complicated as what the NFL has to offer. Fans don’t care, if you fight you are a broke! The player has a nearly career-related injury? Fans don’t care … he’s a broke! Maybe he just fights as hard as many newbies, but he was first or second choice, sorry you’re a bust buddy!
Why did fans turn this ugly corner where we feel like a guy, sometimes in just a game or two, might be able to fight as anyone who is honest could expect and still call it broke? What caused that? Is it the world we live in where you can have anything you want in a jiffy? Hell, I can go online and order an 82-inch TV, and Amazon will get it to me in an hour or two, and in some cases take it out of the box, plug it in, and even mount it on the wall for me. In the worst case, I can have almost anything delivered to me the next day, and it’s often free if I can get it to me so quickly. Is it the Madden Effect that so many point out that younger fans who have been obsessed with the game for years sometimes see the NFL as just a live extension of the game they play on their television or computer year-round rather than the other way around? Is it, as some have suggested, that right now the younger generations are expecting anything and everything, if that is what they want? I don’t see this in my own child, who is in their mid-twenties, or one of their friends who mostly all work full-time while they also go to school, but I’ve seen it sometimes in this generation, but also in my generation and the Generation of my parents, so I refuse that it is as usual they are, not we blame the game that society always plays between the different generations.
What do you think has changed, changing the way fans see the game and the expectations fans seem to have of young or novice players compared to before? Give us your thoughts below!
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