Last night the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the New York Giants by a score of 27-7. The highlight of the game was at halftime when ESPN showed the new Star Wars trailer. Oh and the end of the game……….when the game ended.

It was a horribly played football game by both teams, marred by penalties, turnovers, and overall poor play. It was painful to watch.

More and more NFL games are being played like this. It’s becoming a disturbing trend. Most of these games happen on Thursday Night Football and Monday Night Football. Teams have less time to practice and prepare and it shows during the game. Too many penalties, short runs, incomplete passes, not enough scores, and just overall bad football.

But this also happens on Sunday’s too, when teams have all week to prepare for games. The problem is much bigger than just not enough time to prepare. It’s how teams are preparing.

It’s been well documented how the NFL keeps getting sued by ex-players who suffer brain problems from their playing days. As a result, the NFL has made several rule changes over the years to limit the number of concussions players suffer. These rule changes have eliminated things like two-a-days, contact in practice, and how long practices can last. These rule changes are designed to protect players from injuries, but they might be having the opposite affect.

Several players suffered season ending injuries during training camp this season, including star players like Kelvin Benjamin and Jordy Nelson. Players are changing the way they practice, and once it gets time to play a game, they might find out that they’re not actually prepared to play. You can’t go 60% in practice and expect to play the same way at 100% during a game. Players are pushing themselves harder and harder during games and as a result, the rate of season ending injuries seems to be increasing. Not only that, the quality of play during games is steadily decreasing.

There aren’t that many good teams this season either. There are five undefeated teams remaining, but only the Patriots, Broncos, and Packers have shown that they are truly great teams so far this season. The other teams with good records have been inconsistent and have yet to prove that they can compete with those three teams, and the remaining teams are just bad.

Although I’m glad the NFL is taking steps to help keep players healthy after their playing career is over, they might want to look into how they can keep the game quality from becoming laughable. Don’t get me wrong, people are going to watch the NFL no matter what. They could have arena football players on the field and people would watch. But it would be nice if they could do something to keep games from playing out like last nights game. I’m not saying that they need to get rid of all the new concussion rules, but they might want to think about getting rid of the horrible Thursday Night Football game that happens every week. Anything to keep games watchable.