He sustained a concussion during that game and played roughly one quarter.
There’s the other elephant in the room, though: concussions. There are enough sorts reporters out there calling Goddell out for wanting to crack down on safety, yet want to expose players to more risk and less money with an 18 game schedule.
What I also forgot to mention is how this affects playoff-bound teams and the resting of starters. Now its going to happen even more under an 18 game schedule (which fans hate) than before and even more undeserving teams will make the playoffs due to the luck of the schedule facing teams that have clinched their divisions early.
It will significantly impact the end of the regular season, the tension, struggle and drama that surrounds teams needing to win out in order to make the postseason…and their last game is against the Colts with Curtis Painter, Jim Sorgi or who the fuck ever behind center, leading a pack of backups in what will amount to a pre-season atmosphere…at the end of the season!
I’m absolutely in favor of playing an 18-game regular season and axing two preseason games. (Well, not *absolutely *in favor – more like 90%.)
By going to an 18-game schedule, we replace the boring, colossal ripoff that is preseason football with actual NFL games, which are awesome. This is the best reason to support the move, but there’s more.
2) 18 games is a larger sample size than 16 games. While talk of “parity” is usually overstated, there is nonetheless a rather larger amount of it now than in decades past, and having teams bunched more tightly together in terms of quality makes it harder to determine which teams are actually the best ones. With two extra games, the mediocre team with the weak schedule that’s catching a lot of lucky breaks is less likely to wind up in the playoffs – there’s just more time for their luck to run out. (In fact, the variance in schedule difficulty would itself be reduced, which is good.) Likewise, the sneakily-excellent team that underperforms in the Win column because of bad luck (or maybe a clump of missed games due to injury) will have more time to turn it around and claim their rightful place in the postseason.
With an 18-game schedule, the playoffs will be better and more competitive than they are now.
3) Injury concerns are real, but IMO overstated. First, as someone mentioned upthread, teams will adapt: they’ll use more rotation to keep players fresh, be a little less aggressive in pushing starters to play hurt, etc. Second, there are already plenty of injuries that occur in the two preseason games to be replaced. Granted, there are proportionately fewer injuries to *starters *in those games, but to the extent that one’s objection is based on player safety (as opposed to quality of the product), the point is largely moot: players get hurt all the damn time in preseason. Actually, the thing that’s really hurting the chances for an 18-game season isn’t injuries: it’s timing. Two or three years ago, in this type of situation (need more revenue to settle labor dispute), going to 18 games would have been a slam dunk. Likewise, a few years from now, when the anxiety over concussions has (presumably) died down somewhat, this will be an easier sell.
But, yes, bottom line is that injuries would be a *somewhat *larger factor with 18 regular season games. No matter how many games are scheduled, there’s an inherent tradeoff: do you want more football (greater revenue, more games to enjoy), or fewer injuries? I simply don’t see 16 games (plus 4 in the preseason) as some sort of ideal number or sweet-spot, which is pretty much a requirement if if you don’t want to add games and you don’t want to go back to 14 or less. We don’t know for sure what an 18-game regular season would be like, and I think it’s presumptuous to dismiss it as reckless (or otherwise unenjoyable). Just try it for a year! If you’re not completely satisfied, simply return the unused portion and revert to 16 games in 2012 (or the next time the CBA has to be negotiated). It’s not impossible to go back if it doesn’t work out. For instance, the league could make more money by adding a second bye week, but after trying it in 1993 and getting negative feedback, they ditched the idea. If 18 games proves to be as bad as some people fear, there’s no reason the league couldn’t backtrack.
4) 18 games is probably necessary to avoid a lockout. Granted, this is sort of a meta-concern, but still: it’s the only option available to increase gross revenue, and having more money floating around is probably the only way the two sides can get close enough to compromise.
tl;dr version: If the NFL goes to an 18-game regular season, the magnitude of the downside (injuries) is quite uncertain, whereas the upsides (more football games to watch, more league revenue, less chance of a lockout) are palpable.
Heh, even more (72%) think that the players are overpaid.
What if the options were:
As much as I loathe the NBA playoffs for including too many teams and taking forever, I may actually prefer a playoff expansion in the NFL if it meant we could avoid 18 regular season games. I know the 2 extra games total as opposed to 2 extra games per team wouldn’t rake in nearly the same revenue. By the way, would the 18 game schedule include a playoff expansion to 14 or 16 teams or keep the current format?
I don’t think playoff expansion is part of the negotiations, but I assume it’s going to happen at some point.
I strongly dislike the idea of expanding the playoffs to 16 teams. The postseason is already enough of a crapshoot, and giving the 1 & 2 seeds a bye week is a necessary reward IMO. All else being equal, it’s better to have the elite teams playing deep into the playoffs rather than getting knocked out by lesser foes because they happened to have an off day.
(Thankfully,) I’ve never heard anyone mention the possibility of expanding the playoffs as part of a move to 18 games, so I’m pretty sure that’s not being considered.
The bigger it gets, the more jacked it is, and the NFL is very, very big. Next thing you know, they’ll be dressing them like the fucking Black-Eyed Peas Tronbot Singers and having 3D graphics take the place of the ball and the goalposts.
That’s fair. The union also carries a lot of the blame for the failure to provide for retired player’s health, I won’t deny that.
We just had a 7-9 team in the playoffs. I’m not sure expanding the playoffs makes any sense and I think the opposition for that would be far greater than expanding the schedule. Plus, expanding the playoffs would probably lead to another reshuffling of divisions and another expansion to make the math work out. Most people think the NFL has the sweet spot as far as playoff proportions go, the MLB has too few and the NBA and NHL have too many.
Does anyone else think this is a legit concern regarding expanding the regular season to 18 games?
Yes, it will be a little more frequent, and it’s certainly fair to tally it as a negative.
ETA: However, keep in mind that, while there may be 1 or 2 (or even 3) additional meaningless games at the end of every year, going to an 18-game schedule is also going to get rid of 32 meaningless games at the start of every season.
If they move to 9 home games plue one home preseason game from 8 plus 2, you can be damn sure the owners will jack up prices for season ticket holders. Even if they already charge full price for the preseason games, as I believe Dan Snyder does (though am not sure if other teams do).
What, just because they’re evil? Ticket prices already go up almost every year; teams don’t need an excuse to raise them.
To the best of my knowledge, *every *team charges full price for preseason tickets (and, of course, season-ticket holders are required to purchase them).
Because they can. I am saying they will put the prices up more than they would for 8+2. I don’t think they are evil. Just that their interests and those of the fans and those of the players aren’t necessarily in synch. And that the players and fans have more common ground than the owners and fans.
Well, geez, maybe. But that’s totally speculative, and even if it happened there would be no way to tell if you were correct. My own speculative position would be that an expanded season would have little or no effect on ticket prices across the league; the extra games would have no bearing on the *need *to raise prices – it would just be a potential excuse, and NFL teams don’t rely on excuses for their price increases.
Anyway, besides being speculative, it’s also almost entirely unrelated to the question of whether an 18-game schedule is a good idea.
Why?
Just a couple of hit & run points:
The old USFL used an 18-game schedule. Is there any data from that about whether or not injuries were increased?
Major college football makes do perfectly well without any exhibition games at all.
I’ve read (but can’t find a cite for right at the minute, sorry) that NFL owners are complaining about their interest expenses on new stadiums. Assuming they are saying this, is that a valid complaint? Aren’t most if not all new stadiums publicly financed nowadays?
I don’t think it’s an issue. A longer schedule will mean that teams have more opportunities to catch up. Teams tank when they reach their magic number, it’s very rarely greater than one game, once in a blue moon it’s two. Making the schedule longer won’t mean that the Falcons automatically win their division by 4 games, it just means that the Saints have longer to make up ground. Teams will always have a chance to tank in the final week, whether it’s a 14 games, 16 game or 18 game schedule. This argument seems to imply that the Falcons or Bears would have had more meaningless games with a longer schedule, it just means that those meaningless games will be delayed 2 weeks. Tanked games aren’t dependent on the number of games played or won, it’s dependent on the number of games remaining.
I’d need some statistical proof to accept that argument. How often did teams tank under a 14 game schedule. I’d wager heavily that expanding to eight 4 team divisions had a MUCH greater impact on this than the length of schedule.
This is dumb. Owners increase prices based on what the market will bear. Theoretically adding an additional home game in every stadium would keep prices down because it increases the supply of tickets by 12.5%. What makes ticket prices go up is when player salaries, the single greatest cost by a wide margin, goes up. The players and owners share revenue, both share culpablility in raises in ticket prices and players are primarily driving up costs, not owners.
You really need to stop talking if you’re going to keep spewing the baseless hatred for every owner in every industry. Guess what, labor isn’t any more altruistic than management. Everyone is trying to get paid.
Very good point. Arguing that teams need 4 preseason games (25% of an entire season!!!) to get ready is silly. Teams and coaches that find a way to get prepared with fewer preseason games will win more, putting a burden on competence is a good thing.
People seem to ignore that part of the players case is that they want tighter restrictions and reductions in offseason workouts and camps. They want 2-a-days banned and they want OTAs eliminated. Where’s the whining and finger pointing about quality of play and fear of unprepared players causing injuries in that discussion?
Players are fighting to work less for the same pay. An 18 game schedule is the exact same amount of time commitment from players as it is now, but they want to do less work in the offseason. Yet the owners are the ones wanting more work for less pay?
No, taxpayers contributed to new stadiums but I’m not aware of any that were wholly funded by the public. In most cases the owners borrowed the majority of the money for the stadiums and the taxpayers made up the rest and/or provided tax breaks and tax incentives to make it appealing for owners.
Who should shoulder the debt for building new stadiums is a complicated question. I’m not sure how tightly it’s woven into the CBA, but owners costs have gone up because of the new stadiums (earnings have too). If players and owners are going to share the overall revenues it makes logical sense that they should share costs. There’s a question if players should share in naming rights fees, corporate suites, in stadium advertising and concession revenue and that should be balanced against the sharing of costs, but that would require a lot of specific information that we don’t have.
In any case, I think the taxpayer money should be a non-issue. It’s not revenue or cost and isn’t subject to the CBA, it’s a side deal that the owners and players by proxy struck with the cities. The taxpayers reduced cost for the team and that benefited both proportionally since it directly impacted revenues and costs.
For one, take the example of 18 vs 16 games. Ownership look at it terms of revenue. If every team suffers 12.5% more injuries, that doesn’t damage the interests of the owners - they may get lucky and be less injured, or unlucky and be more injured. But their relative position shouldn’t change.
Players, on the other hand, see 12.5% more injuries as pretty much a bad thing.
The fans are interested in their team winning - the 12.5% increase in injuries won’t alter that in theory. But they are also interested in quality of play. And the increase in injuries will reduce the quality of play across the board.
So there is a closer link between players and fans interests there than there is between fans and owners.
What’s dumb is this naive little fanatasy that owners know what the market can bear, and that in a market as restricted as that for NFL tickets supply can be analyzed in that manner. Sure the players share the culpability - they are the ones setting ticket prices. It isn’t Snyder’s greed, or his willingness to cut the checks to players, it is the players who are sodomizing the fans, and jacking up the price of beer, and charging for parking at training camp, and probably the fucking players who are suing local journalists.
I never suggested they were. Just that the fans turn out better off if the players do better as opposed to the owners. And that also there is a bottom line fairness issue. Labor here isn’t altruistic, but the owners have all the power. NFL players are paid a damned sight better than coal miners, for example, but in both cases, it is the player and miner putting their lives on the line rather than the owner.
Everyone is trying to get paid, but the owners are getting paid a crap load more, and for a crap load longer, and for doing a crap load less. So I’ll continue supporting the unions, while you continue believing every word that comes out of the owners’ mouths is gospel.