Football Is Dead

Long live Football.

By guest contributor T.R. Hudson.

As of the writing of this piece, three of the longest-tenured coaches in the sport of football have parted ways with their organizations. All three have won championships, all three were defensive-minded coaches, and all three are over 70 years old. The old way of playing the game is over.

Bill Belichick is the greatest coach in the history of the NFL. I will hear no arguments to the contrary. That he is 15 games short of the title of “winningest coach” is not an indictment of him, but rather an indication that football has changed more in the last decade than it has in the entirety of the sport’s existence. Belichick will get another shot to coach, and he will get 15 wins before he dies, cementing his legacy.

Nick Saban, the only coach successful (so far) in branching off of the Belichick tree, had one of the greatest runs in college football as head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide. He retired after losing in the college football playoff the year before it would be expanded to let in 16 eligible teams. Bama's inclusion made huge waves across college sports and kicked out the undefeated FSU Seminoles, the first time an undefeated Power 5 team was left out of the playoff. Save for two seasons in his tenure, Saban never lost more than two games per year, so it is clear that he would have had a chance to play for a championship next year; and as college football fans know, bowl season Bama is a different animal from the team you’d face in the regular season. While Bama hasn’t won a championship since 2020, it is a testament to Saban’s program that the national title is the expectation every year. Saban was able to transition his strategy from defensive-minded coach to offensive juggernaut in the last few years as the game has changed. Instead, what pushed Saban out is the change in both how the transfer portal works and how the “Name, Image, and Likeness” deals now offered to college athletes will change how recruiting is done in college football. (Note: there has always been a mercenary aspect to college recruiting. From boosters offering employment to players’ family members, to “slush funds” and actual cash payments to recruits, incoming college athletes are treated like royalty from the moment they sign their commitment letters. NIL evens the playing field by legitimizing some of these practices. Or so it purports to do.)

Both of these coaches, at the pinnacles of their respective leagues, made the decision to leave their programs due to the railroading of their colleague, Pete Carroll. It’s clear from Carroll’s press conferences that he not only expected to be back as the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, but the loss of the position was a shock to him, and the agreement to have him return as a consultant is more akin to putting an old workhorse out to pasture than honoring the coach who brought legitimacy and victory to the franchise. I do not find it a coincidence that his two septuagenarian colleagues, who speak on a daily basis, announced their decisions within hours of one another.

So what happened? I’ve already laid out my thoughts on Saban, but what about at the professional league? In my opinion, the game has changed. These two coaches were known for the bulk of their careers as defensive geniuses. Carroll’s innovations were tested at both the college and professional levels, where he’d won championships in both leagues. Belichick has been a household name in the NFL since the 1980s. But the old adage “Defense wins championships” is no longer the case.

The least pernicious of us could say that the NFL’s commitment to protecting players and safety has changed the ways defenses can interact and try to stop offenses from scoring. Football has been wracked with several “scandals” involving the science behind concussions and the deaths of former players tied to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). Parents these days aren’t letting their sons play football, and the NFL is trying to hedge that eventual drop in potential recruits by expanding past the borders of the United States.

The money that is invested in certain positions — mostly quarterback, though wide receiver is making gains as well — is making NFL owners reluctant to allow their franchise players to get injured, lest they jeopardize their chances to win and, thereby, their attendance levels at games and overall fan interest. I heard it described once that attending an NFL game is an expensive dining experience with live entertainment. It’s more Medieval Times than Gladiatorial Games. The owners of these stadiums put teams on the field so that they can sell you a $10 bottle of Bud Light, and you’ll pay it because you get to see your team play.

We will soon see a game more like Arena Football than the hard-hitting, gritty pastime of the past one hundred years. Every team that has so far hired an “offensive guru” has seen success. Teams that have hired defensive coaches have not. Even teams that have success with their defensive coaches have looked toward greener pastures. The Tennessee Titans fired Mike Vrabel at the same time all of these other changes were happening around the league. He was a winning coach who brought his team to the playoffs on a regular basis, in spite of a talent gap that poor management created. He was shown the door because the owner wants a team like the 49ers: an offensive head coach, a high-scoring offense, and “analytics” (the latest buzzword injecting mathematics into sports). The results remain to be seen.

The Patriots hired their new head coach, Jerod Mayo, a former player turned defensive coach. This has been the Patriots’ plan for a long time. This will fail. I predict that Mayo will last three seasons as head coach before the lack of success forces him out.

Football is dead. Hits that once got you your own segment on ESPN are now heavily fined and will continue to escalate, perhaps even getting you suspended for several games or more.

When I think of the trajectory of football, I see professional basketball. As Isaac Simpson of The Carousel podcast pointed out to me, the 1990s saw the greatest athlete in the world playing basketball at a time when basketball was a regional sport at best. Michael Jordan brought basketball to the same level as football and baseball in America, and I believe that the way the game has been played since his retirement has changed so that every team can have its own “Michael Jordan moments.” In modern basketball, there’s little defense, there’s no regard for the fundamentals, and every team that is not in contention is waiting to land its own star player to build around. The league was desperate for the next Michael Jordan, and they tried to make LeBron James the next guy. It worked for a while, but now that LeBron is on his way out, there is no heir apparent to the throne, and basketball is slipping into irrelevance.

I see the same trajectory with football. Every team wants Tom Brady. But there will only ever be one Tom Brady. So the league changes the rules so that a quarterback can more easily look like Tom Brady. They’ll twist themselves into knots to keep people interested while keeping their assets safe.

Scoring is down this year in the NFL. I predict several more rule changes this off season to rectify that and a 2024 season that is the highest-scoring year in league history. I predict that colleges like Colorado and other schools that use the transfer portal to its new limits will see successes that more legacy programs will take notice of. This is the year the old school died. But I’ll probably still watch, and so will you.