Detroit Lions: Does the preseason really mean anything?

For the Detroit Lions, the exhibition season will start tonight against New England, but do these contests really mean anything?

The Detroit Lions will put the capper on their shared week of practices with New England by facing the Patriots in the exhibition opener tonight.

There will some fans who will be watching intently and others who will say, ‘it’s not real football. It doesn’t matter.’ So the questions are; who’s right? Does it matter at all?

There has been a debate that has raged for years between players and NFL executives about how much value the preseason brings. The truth is that the closest the preseason comes to an actual NFL game would be the first half of the third exhibition game known as the ‘dress rehearsal’.

And even then your still watching vanilla defenses and offenses that are running nothing more than the bare basics of their system.

So the truth of the matter is that while the league does promote the preseason as ‘football being back’, it’s not. At least not real football from an entertainment standpoint. Starters play very little because no coach wants an injury to a key player nor do they want to tip their hand by running their full offense and defense.

It’s top-secret stuff. Even when a team and coaching staff have been together for a few years and the rest of the league already has what they do on tape. It would seem under those circumstances that it wouldn’t matter what you run in the exhibition games because everyone knows what you’re doing anyway.

So the truth is that there are many reasons why the preseason is pointless from an entertainment point of view. But if we look at the preseason for its true value or purpose for coaches, then we realize how essential it is.