If you’re looking to the exhibition season to see how good these NFL teams are, good luck. It is awfully difficult to get a handle on the true strength of NFL teams in the preseason. The action that takes place involves guys who are unlikely to play an important role on their teams, if they even make the club. The second half of these games are often of most interest to Arena Football scouts, as the players have little chance of making it in the NFL.

But the one exception is this week. Coaches want their top players to go through a routine of preparing for a game. They want to give them a little time together to try to regenerate any chemistry that they may have developed the year before. And they hold their breath and hope that nobody gets hurt before they pull them at halftime.

As a result the first halves of the games this week may actually have just a little bit of value for the handicapper who wants to see how these teams stack up. In some cases you may even see teams playing starters vs. starters into the third quarter (to find out you’ll have to check the play-by-play logs if you’re not watching live).

Of course there’s still no Peyton Manning for the Colts, no Tom Brady for the Patriots, and there are other top players being held out of action as well. And the players aren’t stupid, there’s not regular season intensity. But they do try to get some work done this week.

Of course the lack of intensity isn’t the only drawback. Though the starters will be playing, there’s still the issue of not wanting to provide any valuable film for future opponents. So your uncreative offensive scheme matches up against the vanilla defense. But at least this week, in the first half of the games, you’ll have mostly starters playing. And that may be worth paying just the slightest bit of attention to.