Should we care about the preseason?

In a sports world where most fans and media members are always quick to judge teams or players as being boom or bust, preseason football has to be viewed as the playground where most of these critics seem to wonder to. You can always set your clock to people over analyzing August football.

I want to tell you guys something, which I have lived by since 1990...preseason football is the biggest scam in the world. It's a bigger scam than John Rigas stealing money from Adelphia Cable. It's an even bigger scam than having a girl on My Space, who wants to be friends with you, but has provocative photos online (You know what I'm talking about). It's a scam. Plain and simple.

Remember how bad Marv Levy's Bills were during the preseason? From 1990-1993, the Bills only won four preseason games and were notorious for hating the exhibition season. You know why the Bills hated the preseason? No, it wasn't because they wanted to conserve their energy for the keger parties on the Fredonia campus. It's because they didn't need to take the preseason seriously. You really think Jim Kelly needed to work on his timing routes with Andre Reed? Hell, no. The duo could have ran a 30-yard fly pattern in pitch darkness. When you have that much talent, you don't really need that much practice. We are talking about practice here, Practice!! (Iverson voice)

That same logic comes into play today with a team like the Colts, who have been near the top of the NFL for years now. Since 2003, the Colts have a record of 6-20 in the preseason. Why is their record so poor? It's because their nucleus has remained the same and the core players know their playbooks inside and out. On the other end of the spectrum, you have a team like Detroit, who are known as the Super Bowl Champions of the preseason; dominating teams filled with guys who will be bagging groceries by September. Since 2007, Detroit has a preseason record of 9-3, including a perfect 4-0 exhibition campaign in 2008, which happened to co-inside with the Lions going 0-16 in the regular season.

Again, say after me: "Preseason is a scam."

Now sure, you can talk about what you liked and disliked about the first team starters. Hell, I'll be doing it on here, but I'm not going to jump up and down if Trent Edwards throws for three touchdowns against Washington or put my fist through a TV if Edwards repeatedly checks down to running backs. I'm sure the Bills will take the preseason more seriously than other teams, because there are 3 to 4 position battles that are still being sorted out. I'm sure Chan Gailey will want to follow-up on his message of having intense training camps by having intense exhibition games. It would also behove the coaching staff to try and get their starters as much playing time as possible, since the offense and defense are learning new systems.

Even with all that said, I'm still not buying the preseason hype.

I'm sorry, but the mindset for a player starting on opening day at Ralph Wilson Stadium is totally different than playing a August football game in Toronto. Look, all I'm saying is that if you want to judge the Bills preseason action, then go ahead. I would just suggest that any opinions formed about the success or failures of the team should be along the same lines of the New York Yankees losing the first 2 games of the baseball season or if the Colts started the season 1-2. In other words, it's still too early to draw a conclusion. Plus, I think for most fans, if the Bills started out of the gate fast in the preseason, they would conclude that the team is on the right track. However, if the the team came out flat, most fans would just chalk it up as being the exhibition season and we shouldn't panic. Hey, fans don't want to lose that mentality of "Why not us?" during the preseason.

Also, don't start doing scouting reports on the players. I remember during the 2001 preseason, Chuck Dickerson was doing a show on WGR and he was giving scouting reports about the players he saw during the exhibitions. If memory serves me (and it always does), "The Coach" was going off about Aaron Schobel's (Rookie at the time) technique as a pass rusher. I swear, you would've thought he was dissecting the Super Bowl. It was nothing more than a radio show host trying to fill airtime. I assure you, Dickerson wasn't the only person in the media guilty of trying to make the preseason into a big deal. It makes sense for the media to go off about preseason football, because it gives them more material to write about. It would be pretty hard to sit there and write about the preseason if the games are meaningless and that fans shouldn't read into them.

Now, it should be noted that I was one of the few fans who didn't go off the deep end after the Bills preseason performance from last year. In case you forgot, the Bills went 1-3 and the offense looked completely out of sync, which ended up costing Turk Schonert his job. I pretty much drew the line in the sand, saying that "preseason was a scam," kind of like what I'm doing now.

Of course, I was more wrong than right. We all know the Bills offense was terrible last year, but if you think about it, the Bills put on nice back-to-back offensive performances against New England and Tampa Bay at the start of the season. So, it could be a case where the Bills ignored using their best plays in the preseason and used them against Tampa Bay, and then the rest of the NFL caught up to their primitive game planning. Not to mention, NFL teams are very cautious in running their A-List plays during the preseason, especially when the opposition can use those particular games to study film.

In a nut shell, even if the Bills were all about playing well in the preseason and broke out Super Bowl like game plans, there's no way you can tell if the opposition feels the same way. And that's the problem. The Bills could put up 30 points against the Redskins, but the Skins may just be looking to get out of the preseason without getting injuries and may not be concerned with executing their plays. I remember two years ago, Trent Edwards had a career game (Well, two series) against the Steelers (Connecting on 9 of 11 passes for 104 yards and 2 touchdowns) during the preseason. Fans were going ape sh#t about his performance. Can you imagine if Edwards played like that against Pittsburgh in the regular season? Yeah, not going to happen. Something tells me that Pittsburgh didn't really care about winning that game and were just there to pick up a paycheck.

Again, teams have different philosophies when it comes to preseason football. I'm sure we will all see that when the Bills face the Colts in Toronto in two weeks.