Extra Point Football: How much is enough?

If you were a coach on the field at the Patriots/Redskins game the other day, no matter which sideline you were on, you would’ve asked yourself this questions at least once “Have I’ve seen enough from my starters?” After Albert Haynesworth leveled Tom Brady, and if you were the Redskins Defensive Line coach, the answer must’ve been a resounding YES!

However, if you’re Bill Belichick, you have to be asking yourself today, at what cost do I need to see if Tom can still find the open guy?

And therein lies the dilemma. A head coach is expected to have his team game-ready and prepared opening day. To accomplish that, high priced players are asked to put their bodies in harm’s way in an otherwise meaningless game. And now, for the sake of argument, I present to you the two leading schools of thought on pre-season play.

Position 1: No game is meaningless when people are competing for a job. You see, teams are still completing their roster, and everyone must defend their place on that roster.

Position 2: Are you kidding me?…Tom Brady’s position is not open if Tom is healthy. Period.

Yeah…about that last part “if Tom is healthy”. It seems that there are growing questions about the health of Tom’s shoulder. And the ironic thing is, his place on the roster was not in jeopardy UNTIL he played in Friday’s pre-season game.

So what’s a coach to do? And, how much influence does an owner have on that decision?

Well…that depends. Currently the logic is, they play their professionals regardless of the price tag. Bill Belichick doesn’t have the luxury of depth at the quarterback position, and so one may want to reconsider the loss of value should the starting quarterback go down in an otherwise meaningless game. And let’s not kid ourselves. Owners like Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder are renowned for their meddling in personnel decisions. And don’t think they’re the only owners meddling, every owner does it. Jerry and Dan are simply the two most visible examples. And since owners hold the purse strings, their influence has far-reaching effects. Coaches don’t last as long as they once did because owners want to see immediate results. One risk that didn’t pay off, one costly injury that gave you one bad season, could signal a coaching change. That has to have some effect on the coaches decision, regardless of what they say at those orchestrated press conferences. And today’s coaches aren’t merely coaching men and women. Coaches are now the caretakers of today’s athletes. And today’s athletes aren’t the athletes of days gone by. Today’s athletes are now income generating machines. If a star athlete goes down, owners hear the sound of cash registers slamming shut and they envision rows of empty seats in the stands. So now the cost of injury has some measurable value. Men who had entirely too many accounting classes can actually calculate what an injury costs. And because teams can now calculate the real value of an injury, the days of pre-season (meaningless) football are numbered.

But for today, for now, in this game of risk with so much money on the line, players, coaches and owners are all asking themselves “How much is enough?”

For some may have already given too much. - Paul Moyer