The only real lull in the National Football League calendar is here, and you’re probably not even going to notice it.
This is supposed to be the downtime; the period where nothing happens in pro football. It’s vacation season for players, coaches and administrators — and a time when franchise operations purportedly move into a lessened state for a while.
It is done by design, the summer slowdown following the annual round of mandatory league-wide minicamps. It has the effect of creating a line in the sand, ensuring most of the procedure-heavy stuff like the draft and the schedule and the majority of contract issues are finalized already.
That way, when things begin escalating again in mid-to-late July, the buildup to the new campaign is right there, in your face, and the anticipation can begin.
It is a fine theory and it works well for those who make their living in the league. Believe it or not, players don’t sit on their butts from February through July. After a brief postseason pause, most will have been putting in hard work for months, so here is a welcome chance to scale things back a little and be rested for the rigors that lie ahead,
For everyone on the outside, who merely follow the sport with varying forms of obsession, it doesn’t really flow the same.
Because, for the fanatics, the season is nearly upon us already. Football time works different than regular time. It is a tired old cliché to say that the NFL is 24/7/365, but it’s not an entirely inaccurate one.
Football fans will fill their days with whatever they can get and for many, the significance of this period isn’t that their teams are on vacation but that Week 1 is on the clock. Truth be told, it begins to feel that way once certain points in the rest of the sports-verse are reached.
If you’re waiting for the crunch of tackles and the complexities of fantasy and the smell of the tailgate, you’ll take your cues from the fact that the NBA season ended when the Denver Nuggets triumphed a week ago, and that hockey was done when the Vegas Golden Knights secured the Stanley Cup the following night.
Major League Baseball is already closing in on its midway point and the pennant races are gearing up, even if they’re not yet in the deepest throes of their arm-wrestling stage.
Summer football is reaching its peak as well, with the USFL Playoffs taking place in Canton, Ohio, this weekend, capped off by the New Orleans Breakers facing the Birmingham Stallions Sunday at 7:00 p.m. ET on FOX.
Sure, those things don’t mean we’re on the very doorstep of the NFL season, but it is much, much closer than it felt when March crawled into April. We’re at 80 days, and you bet we’re counting.
You can see why the league is happy to go into the hottest part of the year implementing what is effectively a compulsory chill-out period for its teams. Yet, as ever, because in football no issue is deemed too significant to be worthy of chatter and debate, there are still some lingering issues on the radar, precisely the sort of things that will keep fans talking while their heroes are cruising on yachts, trekking to Europe or relaxing on a breach somewhere.
The availability of RB Dalvin Cook and WR DeAndre Hopkins has added some spice to the marketplace, mainly because of the unavoidable sense that if added to the right team, either player could make a real difference to their new employer’s chances of big-time success.
There are high-profile contracts to be negotiated, including two QB deals that will assuredly be for gazillions of dollars but will probably go relatively smoothly — when Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert get things done with the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Chargers respectively.
Plus, a pair of RB negotiations that may prove far thornier, as Saquon Barkley and Josh Jacobs try to get what they’re worth and the New York Giants and Las Vegas Raiders try to leverage the trend of avoiding big payouts to rushers.
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Football frenzy doesn’t ebb and flow based on the scale of fresh talking points. Football isn’t something people lose interest in if there’s not much happening. Teams on vacation, no trades, no training action to peruse over? No problem.
If it comes down to it, football fans will just talk forever about whether Aaron Rodgers can find success with the New York Jets, or about which teams are going to break out, or Tom Brady’s position among the greats, or which of the exciting crop of rookie QBs will be the most effective this year.
No other sport has a buildup that lasts as long as its regular season does. And no other sport grips this country the way that football does.
FOX Sports analyst Bucky Brooks wrote last week that during his time as an NFL player and scout he “cherished the sabbatical between the end of the offseason and training camp.”
But that’s for the players and those putting in the endless hours in the team offices. Fans don’t need a sabbatical. They’re impatient. In the way we anticipate football and prepare for it, there is no lull.
What would it look like if there was a full football detox? Like, if we followed the official NFL vacation period, to the point where you couldn’t even talk about football until July is well underway? Where no one advertised the upcoming season it or planned for it, for a whole month? Where the talk shows spoke of other things? And columnists were banned from writing about it?
Shall we try it one year? No, didn’t think so.
