Well, Week 1 of the NFL season is in the books, and there are a few things I've noticed right off the bat that I guess you could call pros and cons, from a certain point of view.
1) No preseason? No problem. There didn't seem to be any rust on the players for the most part, and the teams in the games that I was able to watch over the weekend (and Monday night) seemed to execute well for the most part. The only exception to this was Miami's Ryan Fitzpatrick, who in one game so far has thrown three interceptions.
I think that moving forward, the NFL needs to drastically reduce the number of preseason games. Four weeks of that is way too excessive, and always leads to way too many injuries and issues. I would think that one or two preseason games is sufficient.
2) Atmosphere. One of the biggest issues I have noticed thus far is the empty stadiums and lack of real crowd noise. Canned ambiance is fine, but it pales in comparison to thousands upon thousands of real, loud fans in the stands, and without masks. The crowd of somewhere around 16,000 in Kansas City was nice, but not loud enough. I got a taste of this on Saturday during the two college games I was able to catch. The lack of noise was shocking, to say the least.
3) Lack of penalties. Most opening weeks in the NFL are always littered with penalties and flags being thrown left and right. It was quite refreshing to see a a very small amount of penalty flags for a change, which helped to keep the game moving.
A good football game can be derailed almost instantly by an abundance of penalties being called by referees and officials that won't let the players play. Watch any NFL playoff game ever if you have any doubts. Good on the officials for keeping it to a minimum.
-TTS
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