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NFL proposed 18 game season to NFLPA with 16 games per player limit


49erurtaza

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Just now, Jakuvious said:

I think there's plenty of ways coaches could choose to approach it.

indeed, but there's only 1 way in which fans will approach it - and that's a big fat "no thanks" as noted by others

Robert Kraft was talking about why they enacted all the rules to protect the QBs and he said:
"Going to see a Pats game without Brady is like going to see Lethal Weapon without Mel Gibson"

The NFL is entertainment and they followed the lead of Hollywood in pimping the leading men. What that means is that the ratings/attendance drops when the leading men aren't playing. That's already been proven. Its a function of how the league is marketed and what the owners are now saying is that they still want the premium price, without the premium performances. The coaches chess games, while interesting, are of little relevance to the only thing those rat bastages care about: mo money $$$

The networks already bicker over who gets the best games in the best slots, to the point that the league had to make accommodations last year and put some NFC on CBS and some AFC on Fox. Which network gets the game where Brees sits and how is that decided ?

I think/hope this is just a negotiation ploy- its something they'll pretend to want, only to offer it up as a sacrificial lamb later

 

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10 minutes ago, 49erurtaza said:

i didnt even think of that, i guess i thought this would only apply to starters. they would need to expand the roster to like 75 for this to work.

If it only counts for starts, then every team is gonna throw out their backups week one on the first play and just run the ball. Then trot out the starters for the next play and play a normal game.

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4 hours ago, Elky said:

The league's obsession with an 18 game season is beyond ridiculous at this point. What we have now is perfectly fine.

All about the money. It's not ridiculous from a revenue standpoint. Makes a lot of sense actually. That said, if they are going to impose a 16 game rule for players, that's a big no for me. Only way that works for the fans even in the slightest, is if it excludes QB's because they are so darn protected and their role is a lot less physical then everyone elses besides the kickers and punters. If a starting QB is forced to sit for two regular season games, it's a non-starter for me. 

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So, let's put the idiocy of this idea to the side for a moment (and it's incredibly idiotic) and consider this question instead: how do you schedule 18 games?

 

Currently, a team plays every other team in their division twice (6 games), a division in their conference once each (4 games), a division in the opposite conference once each (4 games), and a home and away strength-of-schedule game against teams in the divisions that the team isn't playing that finished at the same level (1sts play other 1sts, 2nds other 2nds, etc.) in the previous season.

The only two solutions I can come up with are:

  1. Add an extra pair of strength-of-schedule games versus the conference division playing and the cross-conference division against the team that finished at the same level. As an example, the NFC East is scheduled to play the NFC North and the AFC East this year (obviously as a home-and-home). With this
    1. Dallas would play New England and Chicago twice;
    2. Philadelphia would play Miami and Minnesota twice;
    3. Washington would play Buffalo and Green Bay twice; and
    4. NY Giants would play the NY Jets and Detroit twice.
  2. Instead of just playing the teams that were at the same level as the given team was last year, each team would be either grouped into 1st/2nd or 3rd/4th. Again, using the NFC East in 2019 as an example, you would have:
    1. Dallas would play Atlanta and Seattle in addition to New Orleans and the LA Rams
    2. Philadelphia would play New Orleans and the LA Rams in addition to Atlanta and Seattle
    3. Washington would play Tampa Bay and Arizona in addition to Carolina and San Francisco
    4. NY Giants would play Carolina and San Francisco in addition to Tampa Bay and Arizona

The first solution is unbalanced and the second solution is going to reward the 3rd place team more than any other.

 

Now, let's bring the idiocy of the players only playing 16 of these 18 games. In both of these cases, if I'm a coach, I'm planning on "resting" my players against cross-conference opponents since that's going to have the least impact on my tiebreaker scenarios. However, my owner is not going to want me to do that for home games as that's going to depress ticket sales, so those two games away from home (again using Washington) against the Dolphins and Bills make the most sense. Except this season Washington plays the Bills right before their bye week. On one hand that means my primary starters get two weeks of rest, but on the other I have to worry about them getting rusty.

Then there's the problem of the Dolphins and Bills' owners being kind of pissed off that Washington is effectively sending them their B-squad (please, no jokes ... I know what my team is) and tanking two of their home games, which is going to lower sales at their places.

Does Belichick decide to rest his guys against Washington in week 5 thinking he can beat them with is backups (a decent chance at that), which will depress sales in DC? Or if option #1 from above is on the table, does Belichick decide to throw the two games against Dallas?

 

There's so many bad ways this ends up for only one real upside (money in the pockets of the owners) ... so of course they're going to push forward on it and damn the torpedoes.

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3 minutes ago, Ketchup said:

All about the money. It's not ridiculous from a revenue standpoint. Makes a lot of sense actually. That said, if they are going to impose a 16 game rule for players, that's a big no for me. Only way that works for the fans even in the slightest, is if it excludes QB's because they are so darn protected and their role is a lot less physical then everyone elses besides the kickers and punters. If a starting QB is forced to sit for two regular season games, it's a non-starter for me. 

Well, probably also long snappers. ... And what about guys who are just kick returner/punt returner type guys?

 

Something to watch: do they kill the kickoff before really pushing this?

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31 minutes ago, bucsfan333 said:

If it only counts for starts, then every team is gonna throw out their backups week one on the first play and just run the ball. Then trot out the starters for the next play and play a normal game.

And if players have playing time incentives for number of starts missing out a week one near gimme start is going to go over so well.

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I think it would be cool from a strategic standpoint...    Would put a lot more weight put into back ups especially qb's.   Would also have a lot of weight put into the game day roster as you could have like mixed bag of 1s/2s lineman to preserve them later etc...

 

Now if it was just every team brought out their 2s and played both games after 16 it would be terrible.

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59 minutes ago, 49erurtaza said:

i didnt even think of that, i guess i thought this would only apply to starters. they would need to expand the roster to like 75 for this to work.

Then what would keep teams from simply putting out a different player to start for two weeks but have the normal starters play the rest of the game?

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With the NFL trying to expand their brand if they want to expand the season they should add a 17th game and make it neutral/international.  Take seeding from the previous regular season - not playoff results and line the afc vs nfc up from #1 to #16 and have 1 vs 1, 2 v 2,... etc, all AFC vs NFC.  Have a bye week before and after and have all these games played between weeks 6 to 12.

 

We get to see more AFC vs NFC, the NFL gets to expand their brand and there is another game in the regular season.  NFL teams will no longer be forced to give up a home game for international hosting during the regular season.  The games played in limit is one of the worst ideas that I have heard.

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2 hours ago, Packerraymond said:

So your idea is to remove 2 meaningless games and play them meaningfully with bad players? Sweet. 

I'm plenty happy with the amount of football I have. Two more games of Deshone Kizer (ones as a ticket hold I'll have to pay full price for and won't be able to sell) moves the needle the opposite direction. It's probably the worst rule proposal ever concocted for any sports league.

You’re the worst mod ever concocted on this site.

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1 hour ago, TheKillerNacho said:

In all seriousness, just add another bye week for each team to make it an 18-week schedule. Still 16 games. But 18 weeks of revenue for the league.

This is the only scenario that I can see working. Have to make a provision that the two byes are separated by a certain number of weeks (minimum 4? 6?). The schedulers will have some hair tearing moments trying to make that work, though.

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