NFL Online Betting Lines Week 5

Thanks for visiting my little blip on the blog radar. I know you are expecting the lines, and they will be up shortly. I will have the Opening NFL online betting lines as well as the Current High NFL online betting lines and Current Low NFL online betting lines. But until then I thought that this was a great article that NFL football fans everywhere could sink there teeth into. It also aligns itself to what I believe to be true of the NFL today. Hope you enjoy.

Lousy football on any given Sunday in the NFL

The phone rings every Monday morning during the NFL season. Two old friends with a common bond discuss what they witnessed the day before.

The conversations have typically revolved around a recurring theme in recent years.

This season, disdain has morphed into dismay.

"I can watch football on Saturday from nine in the morning until 10 at night, easy," began the most recent conversation. "But I can barely sit through one NFL game."

Do you ever feel like you're screaming in a soundproof room? Have you ever shouted into a howling wind?

That's how they feel.

"How come we're the only ones noticing this?"

What they've have noticed is a sharp decline in quality of play in the NFL. They watch uninspired matchups week after week and think to themselves:

Wait a minute. This is football at its highest level?

The league trumpets the realization of former commissioner Pete Rozelle's dream:

Any team can beat any other team on any given Sunday. But this long sought-after parity has resulted in a product that is deteriorating before our eyes.

It seems as if there's a conspiracy to suppress the obvious. Owners are printing their own money. It's not as if they are going to complain about all the missed tackles, blown assignments and all-around sloppy play when they're shining their shoes with $100 bills. Announcers are most often ex-NFL players who are more prone to cheerleading. Coaches and general managers aren't going to admit what they know to be true, at least publicly.

It's not as if the popularity of the sport has waned. Fans are so wrapped up in their fantasy teams, office pools and three-team parlays that they appear blissfully unaware of how much bad football is being played in the league these days. Fans of specific teams have such a myopic view that they are unable to see the larger truth:

The NFL ain't what it used to be, folks.

That's especially true for those who don't follow a specific team but the league as a whole. These two old friends aren't Raiders fans or 49ers fans so much as they're fans of the game. They watch game after game week after week not because they care which team wins so much as because they're curious to see which team wins.

But look at this week's games. Loyalties aside, is there one must-see matchup? Are there more than five teams in the league that don't make you think: blech.

There are 32 teams in the NFL today, but you can count on one hand the teams that are solid both offensively and defensively. The league likes to promote the idea that any team can make the Super Bowl, but even that doesn't seem true this year.

If the first four weeks are any indication, at least 27 of the teams are average at best.

Barring something unforeseen, can anyone imagine a Super Bowl that doesn't pit the New England Patriots vs. the Philadelphia Eagles?

The salary cap has resulted in teams spending most of their money on a star player or two and surrounding them with mediocrity. The turnover rate is so high that coaches are forced to reintroduce the same basic offensive and defensive schemes to newcomers every year instead of introducing more sophisticated concepts.

Depth is a luxury teams can't afford. In most cases, the talent chasm between a starter and his backup has never been so dramatic.

Adding roster spots wouldn't help because general managers would just use the additional spots on more low-salaried players. Upping the salary cap would just result in the star players making even more money at the expense of everyone else.

Mike Shanahan offered owners a solution several years ago that has been endorsed here before and since. The Denver Broncos coach proposed that teams should be permitted to re-sign their own free agents with only a percentage of that salary counting under the cap. The NBA uses a similar system to ensure teams retain star players.

The beauty of it is there is no obligation either way. The owner doesn't have to offer more and a player doesn't have to accept it. But it gives both sides that option.

How did owners respond? They laughed Shanahan out of the room.

Owners will sell their souls for cost certainty even when they share revenue. The game is suffering, their product is decaying, but they don't care. Nobody seems to care. The old friends feel as if they are shouting into a vacuum, wondering why nobody sees what's blatantly obvious to them.

Meanwhile, as another big football weekend approaches, these two NFL junkies will be right in front of their TVs. They can't help themselves. They love the game too much. They wouldn't miss it for the world: Cal vs. USC.