There’s a reason people don’t watch early preseason games - they’re not really *games* the way we generally understand them.Ordinarily, we expect that the players’ primary focus will be winning the game, and the coaching staff’s primary focus will be winning the game, and that our primary takeaway will be whether our guys won the game or not.
Preseason isn’t like that. These are games you need a Secret Decoder Ring to puzzle through - that, and a steady source of caffeine. Each player likely has his own agenda at this point, and the green shoots of Joga Bonita only grow so quickly within a group of players, so the football tends toward the simpler end of the spectrum - mazy dribbling runs ending when no supporting move appears, wall-passes that spin off into no-man’s land, the difficulty of connection and creation laid bare.