There are a lot of things converging on the NFL right now, not just the disgusting anthem protests. Problem is, once a brand starts declining, it's really hard to reverse. Horse racing and boxing were major sports in the 1940's.
You need to reverse the cause & effect relationship to identify the true goal. The entire objective of the NFL is to generate revenues. A sport called "American football" is the entertainment production the league hosts to sell (a) advertising space; (b) ticket/concession sales; and (c) merchandise.
Advertising fees are by far & away the biggest revenue source. The problem then becomes, how to maximize the amount of time breaking away from game time and running ads? The NFL could only have so many minutes per game for pure advertising breaks before some kind of push back resulted. The solution was to not only create more complex rules, but to also initiate in-game reviews.
Voila, approximately a 100% increase in the amount of time the league was able to break away from games and run more advertisements. Pure genius if one were honest about it. The problem became, of course, boring, interrupted play, but the league figured it could lose the 5-10% outliers (like you & myself), if they could retain the (dumb ass ie "my team" fans) base and double advertising revenues.
And it worked, until a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Hubris, the great downfall of all men and empires. The kneeling protests not only gave the small minority already abandoning the league yet another excuse, but it gave a segment of the "my team" fan base a ready reason to be offended and also join the boycott.
And that's were we are. I challenge anyone to turn on a game for 5 minutes and see if you can still stomach at least four things: clueless, slick, high concept studio commentary (as if nothing could possibly be wrong), stupid commercials, constant breaks and boring play. I claim it cannot be done - it took some very powerful, gradual brainwashing - possibly over decades in my case - to become habituated to the creep. Yet, once the habit is broken - in many cases just a few weeks - it seems inconceivable to subject one's dignity to such offensive, manipulative tripe.
Penalties are never reviewed, but your point is taken about certain reviews being way too long. Especially when it’s fairly clear what has happened (i.e. a clear scoring play or a clear fumble, etc.)
And yes, the push towards increased scoring and increased passing at the expense of defensive play has left the defensive players virtually unable to touch pass receivers. This makes the game stumble with penalties on almost every pass play.
The NFL isn’t boxing or horse racing. Despite it’s decline, it’s far and away the most popular major sport in the country. It’s revenue and ancillary revenue far outpaces the others.
I do think the over saturation has hurt a lot. And turning teams around from Sunday to Thursday has also hurt the quality of the game in terms of preparation time, players recovering from injury etc... It’s been a “perfect” storm for the NFL and the kneeling has been butchered by the league about as bad as it possibly could have been.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens.