NFL Viewing is down 7.5%. Do you watch the Bengals as Much? Causes of this?

[*ochocincos*]

(10-18-2017, 09:38 AM)THE PISTONS Wrote: One obvious factor for the decline is the protests of players not standing for the national anthem. But, if you look closer there are other causes:

1 ) Offensive line play appears horrible round the league.
2 ) There appear to be no dominant teams. There aren't really many teams I'd consider good.
3 ) I've read speculation that the slotted rookie contracts in the CBA have made teams top heavy and cut out the middle. Why would teams pay a guy $3-4 million when they could draft a rookie and pay him $400k?
4 ) QB play in the league appears down
5 ) Rules appear to be called inconsistently

Any other things you notice? Thoughts?


http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/21056998/nfl-ratings-75-percent-week-6-2017-compared-2016

My main gripe has to be the penalties. Nearly any time there is a big play, there is a pretty good chance there was a flag thrown. It really takes the excitement out of the game when it's penalty after penalty. All the flags often put the outcome of the game in the hands of the refs. And a lot of these penalties are subjective, especially hard hits. There should be three challenges added just for penalties per half.

It seems like college calls fewer penalties than NFL does, but maybe that's because of fewer penalties actually being committed rather than the NFL refs just being more nitpicky vs college refs. But if feels like the college refs allow more things to go unless they are blatant. Anyone else notice this?