Every year, the drum beats grow loud at this time of year, seemingly mostly from those who don’t feel like covering special teams games, sounding the cry for the meaningless of this exhibition period. I have never held this opinion, and never will. Every other major team sport has its exhibition period—Spring training, the Summer league, etc. The notion that football, the most intricate and strategic of said sports, would be better without it seems to me rather asinine.
I don’t even buy that it should be truncated, but really, I’m digressing at this point. The point is that we’re up to ‘the preseason game that matters’, the one where for most teams, their starters actually play a bit, though even that seems to be changing in the minds of some teams, at their own risk.