Last season was marred by the NFL locking out the players. Yes, all games were played on schedule, and, yes, the playoff teams were mostly predictable, but neither of these things mean the season went unaffected. Without training camp and with fewer preseason games, teams were left to come together, or gel, during the season, when the games matter. It did not bode well for young or revamped teams. The Philadelphia Eagles stick out when you talk about teams not gelling. Their defense, which was basically overhauled, looked lost and confused early on in the season but came on strong towards the end, after they figured things out. The lack of an offseason also saw injuries soar and some teams were completely ruined because of them. The Kansas City Chiefs and Chicago Bears come to mind when you talk 2011 injuries. The Chiefs were devastated by injury within the first two weeks and only saw more as the season went on while the Bears lost their two best offensive players, Matt Forte and Jay Cutler, late in the season. Both teams had a good shot at making the playoffs, but neither did.
This season is being ruined by the NFL lockout out the referees. This time teams got a normal offseason and preseason to gel, but now they have to deal with the incompetence of replacement refs. The sub refs are so bad that I don't even need to get into what they have done wrong. All you have to do is watch any game played so far or click into the NFL section of any sports news site, and you will see and hear these replacements being bashed by everybody. As it's been stated multiple times, these subs affect the flow of the game and how teams go about their business. It is now much harder to be an up-tempo team with the sub officials taking their time to get things straightened out. The calls themselves are just awful as well. Never have I heard the word 'phantom' be used for anything besides a ghostly evil thing. This year I have heard used multiple times to describe a penalty that physically didn't happen, but was called, on the field. Every part of the game is being destroyed by the lack of proper officiating, and every team with a loss so far this season, which is every team besides Houston, Arizona, and Atlanta, could cite questionable officiating as a major reason to why they lost.
It doesn't take a genius to realize that the last year-plus of football has not been what it could have been. The league locking out the players and refs is not helping to build the NFL brand. Years from now the lockouts will still be talked about. This will not be a two year thing. What happened before and during these past 20-something games will not just vanish into thin air, forgotten by all. It will be talked about for years and years. They probably become case studies in classes referring to what happens when employees get locked out. These lockouts will be black marks on the NFL forever. People will criticize commissioner Roger Goodell for having back-to-back lockouts. He should have learned from the mistakes of the first. The players didn't just let the owners walk all over them. There was give and take from both sides, and a pretty fair deal was reached. Instead of being more willing to compromise with the officials, the NFL is again trying to railroad them into its terms. This is not how a business is run. Business requires give-and-take, not just take. If corporations could just demand things from their employees, then the word 'negotiate' would have never made it to the English language. Right now the NFL is unwilling to negotiate, and its product is suffering because of its own stubbornness and poor business skills.
All of this leads to one, semi-obvious question: "should asterisks be put next to the 2011 and 2012 seasons?" It's a good question because the play on the field was, and is, clearly affected by these lockouts. I do not think the 2011 season should have an asterisk. Lockout or not, injuries are part of the game and you cannot prove that the lockout increased the injury rate, or decreased it for that matter. Also gelling and becoming a team is what teams have to do every season and even if it takes four or five regular season games to do so a team would still have a decent shot of making the playoffs. The 2011 season, while clearly affected by the lockout, was basically a regular season in the NFL. This season, however, should definitely have an asterisk next to it. The sub refs are far too inconsistent to be compared to the regular officials. This season is nothing like a normal NFL season. Nobody knows what will be called each week penalty-wise, and it's very hard to prepare a team when you don't know how the rules will be enforced week-to-week. It's not hard to realize that this season is tainted, though. If I were an NFL owner, I would not want to be Super Bowl champion this year. Whatever happens come February will be overshadowed by the replacement refs of September and October, and it won't just be this season. It'll be forever.
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