Jason Whitlock: “Yesterday [Sunday], I’m watching Malik Willis, the backup quarterback for the Tennessee Titans, and Malik Willis is struggling mightily. The guy had a chance at the end to make it competitive, and the guy looks like someone who has never played quarterback a day in his life. I was thinking ‘how could this guy be this bad? This guy hasn’t developed at all.’ He looked like someone who has never played quarterback in a pee-wee football game, let alone an NFL game. It made me think: ‘what am I watching?’ as I keep seeing all of this poor quarterback play in all of these NFL games. This play is incredibly sloppy, teams are struggling to score points like I’ve never seen before, and quarterback play is horrendous—particularly in the red zone. The NFL reminds me of ‘The Smartest Guys in The Room’, the documentary that chronicled the collapse of Enron. Roger Goodell is Jeffrey Skilling, the CEO who appeared to save Enron with a devious accounting scheme that allowed the company to claim projected earnings as immediate profit. Corporate media and market analysts ignored the obvious fraud for years, celebrating Enron and Enron founder Kenneth Lay as ‘visionary geniuses.’ Eventually Enron filed bankruptcy and federal prosecutors convicted Skilling and Lay of securities fraud. The ‘smartest guys in the room’ proved to be not-so-smart. A similar comeuppance awaits Roger Goodell as the man who oversaw the fall of professional football. Nothing is more over-valued than the NFL. This year’s product is the worst the game has ever produced. The league’s most ‘interesting’ story-line is a manufactured love story between America’s top pop star, Taylor Swift, and a vaccinated tight end, Travis Kelce. The on-field product is sloppy and uninteresting. This week produced just two teams who could score more than 26 points. Two weeks ago, six NFL teams failed to score a single touchdown. The Titans have scored fewer than 30 points in 24 straight games. NFL teams are averaging just 2.32 touchdowns per game, the lowest average in 18 years. Individual teams are kicking 2.12 field goal per game, the highest average since the 1970s. The average of 1.84 field goals made is the highest in league history. Over the past four decades the league has implemented rule after rule to increase scoring and touchdowns. Bump-and-run coverage has basically been outlawed, you can’t blow up a receiver running across the middle, can’t blindside block a defender, you almost have to ask permission to sack a quarterback, receivers now wear gloves that make catching a pass far easier than at any time in football history, referees love calling pass interference and illegal contact, quarterbacks routinely complete 70% of their passes... For all the rules changes and alleged ‘quarterback wizardry', all we’re getting is more field goals and 16-14 snoozefests? Swift is the biggest star in the NFL. Swift and Deion Sanders replaced Tom Brady as the game’s top ambassadors. This is Enron 2.0. It’s a bad product camouflaged by the social media matrix and corporate media influencers more concerned with maintaining access than objectively evaluating the game. The NFL moved ‘Thursday Night Football’ and the Sunday Ticket to Amazon and YouTube because ownership realizes it’s far easier to manipulate and control viewership with internet algorithms. Why is the product tanking? Because high level football requires practice. Teams no longer practice. Under the pretense of protecting players from head injuries, teams no longer practice. They ‘train’, they condition, they conduct walk-throughs. They do not practice, not in pads, and not in a real way. Players are doing far less and getting paid way more. They're stockbrokers pitching penny stocks as blue-chip. This reminds me of Jordan Belfort, the ‘Wolf of Wall Street.’ NBC, Fox, ESPN, CBS, Amazon, and YouTube are the guys hanging on Belfort’s every word. The NFL is pitching this bad product to everybody, and they’ve got their salesmen out there selling you penny stocks and pretending like it’s blue chip. They want football fans to believe Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, and all the rest are the second-coming of Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Dan Marino, and John Elway. It’s not true. You have to actually practice at the level of the all-time greats. You can’t build a cohesive offensive line if you don’t practice. You can’t establish a consistent and reliable running game if you don’t practice. The players don’t care about the product, they care about their brands and their money. They’re entitled, they feel sorry for themselves. I don’t blame them. They watch and listen to sports talk shows and podcasts that paint them as victims and treat them as idols above criticism. The people analyzing the game are liars. They won’t tell you what they see, what’s obvious. The game is in rapid decline. Most of the quarterbacks simply cannot read a defense. You learn to read a defense in practice. Teams no longer practice. You don’t need to read a defense or firmly grasp the playbook in order to excel or get paid in the modern NFL. The coaches tape the plays to the wrist of the quarterback and then tell the quarterback what to do in an earpiece installed in his helmet. You don’t have to win in the postseason to secure a major contract, every starting quarterback in the NFL eventually gets paid. The problem is only going to get worse. College quarterbacks are now earning millions of dollars through name, image, and likeness deals. The entitlement and brattiness of the players are major turnoffs. Athletes are as unlikeable and as difficult to relate to as Hollywood actors. Football is trending in the wrong direction. The product is awful. Referees influence outcomes more than anyone on the field. Fantasy sports and gambling will only mask the uninspiring play for so long. The smartest guys in football are just as stupid as the smartest guys at Enron. The NFL is in free-fall and nobody is willing to talk about it.” (Full Segment Above)
Watch Jason Whitlock of Fearless compare the NFL to the infamous failed company Enron, as Whitlock says the poor play across the sport in the season’s first month is evident of a league whose overall value is being greatly inflated and overstated, and one that will soon plummet in price.
Check out the segment above as Whitlock explains the real reason why he thinks the product on the field has been so poor this season.
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