Last night, the NFL season kickoff was fun.

Well, outside of the hour-long lightning delay. That was painfully long.

It was fun to have football back, yes. But what we got was preseason football dressed up as a regular season game.

NFL season kickoff was nothing more than a preseason game

For football starved fans, anything is better than nothing.

We’ve all drafted our fantasy football teams. We want to see how our guys play. We’ve waited nearly seven months for our team to “get ’em next year.” And some of us have even waited patiently to put some cash down, too.

But what we got last night, when the Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles played the Dallas Cowboys, was nothing more than a preseason game.

The Eagles were the most complete team in football last year. That’s why they won the Super Bowl and crushed the Chiefs. Man, that felt good, especially if you’re a Broncos fan.

Saquon Barkley couldn’t be stopped in 2024, and neither could Jalen Hurts, especially on the “Tush Push.” But as good as their offense was, their defense was just as dominant.

And yet, the Eagles defense was nowhere to be found on Thursday night. Not just during that lightning delay, but for a vast majority of the game.

Look, Dallas’ offense may be much-improved compared to last year. Certainly, having Dak Prescott back and healthy helps. But even Javonte Williams looked like a star running back for the first half against the Eagles. He scored twice in the first half alone, something he did for Denver only once last year.

And while CeeDee Lamb hit the century mark (110 yards) in the game, he could’ve had many more yards if it weren’t for some untimely drops in the fourth quarter.

The players–who don’t practice with pads enough in the offseason anymore and hardly participate in preseason games nowadays–were extremely rusty, and it showed. Not only that, but after the second halftime break, many of the players looked gassed.

Barkley had to ask to come out during what could have been a game-clinching drive, and Hurts was forced to call a timeout, too. Philly’s QB, one of the most athletic players in the league, was taking some very tiny steps toward the sideline; he was out of steam.

Ultimately, the better team won. The Eagles defeated Dallas 24-20. But that “preseason” game was nowhere near as good as Philadelphia will end up being this year.

The NFL hurt their product when they elected for 17 regular season games

The people who are being hurt by this new NFL product are the fans.

Not only you and me, on our couches, spending 5 hours watching a game. But those people who spent regular-season money for a glorified preseason game.

And the reason why this is the reality in today’s NFL is because the league was money-hungry and hurt their own product by adding one, single regular season game.

Rewind to 2021 and the league went from 16 to 17 regular season games, and simultaneously cut their preseason from four games down to three.

Four years later, and teams are still trying to figure out how to best use those three games compared to how they previously used the four-game preseason slate. Back in the day, most teams would play their starters 1-2 series in the first game, then a quarter in the second, and finally an entire half for the third game before resting them in the preseason finale.

Now, some starters aren’t playing a single down in the preseason, although that’s seemingly rare.

For the Broncos, the starting offense played two drives in the first preseason game, zero in the second, and then into the second quarter in the final preseason game.

For all intents and purposes, the team’s starting offense has played one half of football to this point. When they play the Tennessee Titans (Sunday, Sept. 7 2:05 p.m. MT) at Mile High Stadium, they’re not going to be anywhere near game shape. And both sides of the ball are going to look extremely rusty.

That’s almost certainly going to be the case tonight as part of the NFL season kickoff when the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers–two Broncos and AFC West rivals–face off in Brazil. And it’s the same for every team.

The reality of today’s NFL is the first 2-4 weeks of the “regular season” is still just preseason football. That hurts the product of the entire league, especially for those fans who shell out hundreds of dollars to be inside an NFL stadium.

While he was just talking about Denver’s running attack, Sean Payton may have well just said this about the entire team.

“I think we will have an idea at the quarter pole where we’re at…I always talk about that first month of the regular season. There’s that race that you’re having with everyone else to improve. I think when we get through those first four weeks, you guys, myself included, will all have a better feel for, ‘This is what we’re seeing now. It looks positive.’ I think that’s something that will be real important.”

While it’s always been true to a certain point that teams have to learn to gel early on, we’re seeing a worse product on the field as the season kicks off than we did in the past.