NFL: Did the Lockout Affect Teams' Performances This Season?

If you listened to some of the NFL games on television, you will hear the announcers debate the effect of the lockout on the game overall so far this season. 

Depending on how your favorite team is doing, you may feel that the lockout has a little something to do with the sluggish start by many NFL teams.

Of course, if you are a Green Bay Packers fan, you aren’t worrying about much of anything.  Your team is on top of the league and doing very well.

So why are teams seemingly having a rough start to the season?  Is it due to the lockout?

If you haven’t noticed, for the most part, the offenses are ahead of defenses so far this year, so teams that relied upon their defense to help them win games—teams like the Baltimore Ravens and Chicago Bears—are having some trouble winning games with the way their defense is playing. 

Why would defenses be at a disadvantage with the lockout?  Remember that during OTAs and workouts, the coaching staffs will start to implement new schemes (both on offense and on defense), and with the defensive schemes being much tougher to install and taking longer to get used to, those offseason sessions really help.

With the lockout, there weren’t any of these workouts to help the defenses get familiar with the new schemes that were to be implemented.  They also didn’t have time to get used to working with any of the new players (and really any new players didn’t come in until the start of training camp as it was) so those they were behind from the beginning.

Offenses are much easier to put together and develop than the defenses are, and we have seen that the teams that have struggled, struggle on defense for the most part.

We saw something interesting in the ninth week of the season, when offenses in many of the games ran rampant over the opposing defenses.  You would think that by the time we hit the halfway point in the season, the defenses would be up to speed, but that just doesn’t appear to be the case.

When will the NFL’s defenses get up to speed? 

It’s possible that they could never get up to speed this season, and offenses will rule the league this year.

We are starting to see some of those teams that started off the season slow pick things up a little bit.

The Kansas City Chiefs, a team that made the playoffs last season, started the season out slow but have since started to look better.  Perhaps the lockout affected this team a little bit, forcing them into a slow start.

There are other teams that have experienced this.  The Giants were a team that started off the season a little rough but have since come back and have been playing well (although many of their problems can be traced to injuries) recently. 

The Bears went through some struggles but have started to play better again.

Almost every team (perhaps except the Packers) has been affected by the lockout in some way.  You can see it in every game. 

It’s a strange year in the NFL, that’s for sure, and while the lockout may not be entirely to blame for all of this, it is to blame for some of what we are seeing now.