Rejoice, NFL fans! Preseason is now over. We've made it through yet another year of the four-week long game of: "I never knew that guy existed" and "That guy's still in the NFL?" Now we enter the regular season and have actual good football to quench our thirst. But, for some teams, there are less reasons to be optimistic. Two teams went 0-4: The Cleveland Browns and New Orleans Saints and ten teams went 1-3: The Buffalo Bills, New York Jets, Cincinnati Bengals, Pittsburgh Steelers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers, Dallas Cowboys, Chicago Bears, and Arizona Cardinals. If you are a fan of one of these teams, you may be asking yourself: "Why should I be optimistic about this season? Even our preseason was terrible. I had that same question as a Bears fan myself, however, there are still plenty of reasons to be optimistic despite a terrible preseason. You just need to dig deeper to find them.
1. "At least (insert name here) played well."
Even in the darkest games of your season, I guarantee you can find one player who played well. It may be a 3rd string running back. It could be a bottom of the roster linebacker, or it could be your starting quarterback. Whoever it may be, get excited about it. This player had a great game. Don't overreact to it but it's okay to be excited for a player who played well, preseason or not, because a good performance is a good performance. Who knows? Maybe the rest of the team will be inspired to play better by that good performance.
2. Most of the players won't be playing after the preseason
If it's true that no one played well at all, most of the players on that field won't be playing once the preseason ends. The coaches signed them just to try them out and see what they do and see if they impressed. Obviously, they didn't. And now, they get cut, so you can breathe easy knowing you won't have to watch them play anymore. At least, not on your team. Another team may pick up that player but that just makes it better for you because you can sit back, watch, and laugh while that team falls into the pit of despair that you avoided by cutting this player in the preseason.
3. Scores and wins and losses don't reflect team talent
The better team doesn't always win in the preseason. The 1985 Chicago Bears, the ones who made the Super Bowl Shuffle, went 0-4 in the preseason. They didn't win a single game until the regular season and yet, they went on to win the Super Bowl. That's not to say that the Browns or Saints are Super Bowl, or even playoff contenders this year. But hope is the first step. Just because a team goes 0-4 in the preseason doesn't mean they are destined to go 0-16 in the regular season. There's still hope, regardless of what your team's record may be.
4. Teams don't game plan
The preseason is generally pretty vanilla. In the regular season, teams will methodically lay out a plan and prepare for certain nuances of certain teams. In the preseason, they don't do that. Preseason football is for teams to identify traits and abilities, not necessarily talent. So, just because a team doesn't play well in the preseason doesn't mean they'll do poorly when they actually game plan and strategies in preparation for a game. And teams don't want to give away their style before the season starts. All teams have certain styles of play but they don't want to give that away in the preseason. They need to keep it a secret until actual meaningful football starts.
And last but not least...
5. It's just the preseason
In the end, it's just preseason. Who cares if your 3rd string running back outran your starter or if a bottom of the roster corner was playing better than a starter. Maybe your team just uncovered a gem. You can't overreact to the preseason but don't just write it off too. Parts of it can be useful. There's a happy medium between: "Oh my god, this is terrible. We're going to suck because of preseason." and "Preseason has absolutely no implications whatsoever." Find that happy medium and don't get too worked up over preseason football. It's ovr now and we can move on to what matters, the regular season.
