Your remote controls spoke loud and proud this season.

Whether the NFL TV ratings were down because of the presidential election, poor play or a mixture of the two, commissioner Roger Goodell addressed pace of play at his press conference on Wednesday.

Let’s be honest, with increases in technology, the game is simply better at home than in person. You get the myriad of graphics and stats that each network provides; multiple angles with dozens of replays for every close play and you don’t have fight lines to get food or use the bathroom.

However, the commercial breaks have gotten out-of-hand. Every scoring play is now reviewed — even though it shouldn’t be. So networks usually take that time to take a break. They then come back and show the extra point, followed by another break. Then they return for the kickoff and as soon as the returner gets tackled or takes a knee in the end zone, the networks scurry to take another break. The most popular person on the field these days seems to be the guy in the orange sleeves, who’s telling the refs when the game is going to or coming back from a commercial break.

Back in 2010, The Wall Street Journal found out that the ball is in play only 11 minutes of an NFL game. That’s distressing. At least the NFL doesn’t stop the clock after first downs like the college game, or else we’d be staring at four hours for a regulation game.

Goodell said he expects changes to pace of play. Whether that means the NFL will be more autonomous with how the networks take breaks is yet to be seen. But exactly what can the NFL do? ESPN doesn’t pay $1.9 billion, CBS doesn’t pay $1.5 billion and Fox and NBC don’t shell out $1.1 billion a year to broadcast the NFL, only to have the NFL tell them how to do it.

Maybe the NFL and the networks could work a deal where they could play commercial breaks without leaving action. For example, show the extra point with a small inaudible commercial playing in one of the corners sans the network’s ticker and graphics.

There could even be minor things like the clock only stops when an offensive player goes out-of-bounds in the final five minutes of each quarter. Have a firm time on an instant replay decision. Don’t keep players and fans hostage for 15 minutes trying to determine if a receiver got both of his feet inbounds.

I don’t think the pace of play kept people from initially watching, but it may have had an impact in how many people changed the channel or turned off the TV. If a game is monotonous with no flow whatsoever and especially if you don’t have a rooting interest in the game, what are the odds that you’re going to stay glued to that game?

It also doesn’t help that fans can cheat nowadays. They can watch the RedZone Channel without ever having to sit through an entire game. In a few years you may actually have fans that only watch complete games in the playoffs — because the RedZone goes dark in the postseason.

In this age of everything needs to be done five minutes ago, it’s about time that the NFL cuts the fat from its game. I just don’t want it trimmed too close to the bone.