So with this the owners get their 9 home games for ticket sales … but fans will have no assurance that the players they’re paying to see will actually be on the field for that game. You could say “Well, it’s just like if a guy got injured” but injuries are bad luck/rolls of the dice. These would be league mandated absences from 2 games every season.
And what if the backup who is subbing for Tom Brady, say, gets hurt during one of Brady’s mandated games off? Can Brady come in? Does that mean he has to sit out another game?
I just can’t see how this is workable in any way. It’s gotta be a gambit, right? A proposal the NFL knows won’t get anywhere so they can eventually foist a full 18-game slate on the players? Tell me this “every player sits out two games” idea isn’t absolutely laughable.
My guess is it’s a financial thing. All the players presumably have contracts based on a sixteen-game regular season. Require them to play two more games and you’d have to pay everyone more. So instead the owners have the players sit out two games; they still get the extra revenue but don’t have to pass it on.
as far as the offensive linemen go , the backup QB would not be playing with 5 backup O linemen. They can spread the weeks off for the linemen. I doubt this happens but I guess there is a slight chance it might.
Of course late in the season some teams might not care who plays because they are either locked in or out of the playoffs.
No, I get it that they wouldn’t roll out an entire lineup of backups twice a year - they’d want to stagger the time off over the course of the season.
By my points still stand. What about the family that gets tickets to see Aaron Rodgers and the Packers, but that’s the week he has to sit? What if Chad Henne gets hurt in his relief start for the Chiefs - do they bring in Mahomes (in which case, does that count for his ‘game off’ or not), or is it Princeton rookie John Lovett entering the game?
I know why the owners are proposing this ($$$$$$) - my question is, how could this ever actually work?
Presumably, if they do this, the schedules would be made public. So if you really want to see one particular player, you pick one of the games when he’s playing.
It could lead to low attendance for those two games, though, for teams with one specific star.
I’m seeing possibilities here. As soon as rosters are finalized in September, you hold a big drawing, and every player on an NFL roster is randomly assigned two bye games during the season. And, “drawing night” will become a huge TV attraction, and fans and analysts and gamblers will chew over the results for days to come.
“The Bears got screwed! Khalil Mack has to sit out the Packers game!” “Yeah but on the other hand one of Trubisky’s byes is against the Cardinals, and even a backup QB can beat the Cardinals.”
Of course not. The odds of all five of his starting O-linemen drawing byes in the same week is astronomical (about one in 32,000–and if even that is too great a risk to run, the byes could be organized by position clusters to prevent a team from being weakened too much at any position in any one week.)
In any given week one or even two of Rodgers’ linemen will be out on byes, but that’s little different from the situation today with injuries.
Being the violent sport it is, 16 regular season games really ought to be the upper bound for scheduling. Additionally, with the number of teams and the divisions the way they are 16 is the perfect number.
The owners want 18 games, but they’ll never get it. Even as weak as the NFLPA is they’ll fight 18 games and win.
Unfortunately, same thing as when he injures his knee in pregame warmups or has a concussion- theyd be SOL. The leagues have made it clear when MLB or NBA players rest a day that the ticket you buy guarantees you see a game, not a certain player.
The NFL has it perfect. Start the season right after Labor Day and the Super Bowl falls in February once people are done with their New Year’s Resolutions and Dry January and it falls before Lent begins
If we could only get rid of Thursday night games and London games.
I like this. I mean, I don’t think the NFL should go to 18 games, but if they do, this should be the way to do it.
The problem with this, though, is each team loses one home preseason game while gaining one home regular-season game. Since the teams include preseason games as part of their season ticket packages, this is essentially a wash money-wise (which means it’s very, very, very unlikely to happen).
They should get rid of the Thursday games completely, but if they keep them, using only teams coming off a bye is the only way that doesn’t make a mockery of the league’s “concern” for players’ health.
It does seem a bit different to me to not see a player because they’re hurt - or even because the team decided to rest them - as opposed to a league-mandated day off. And I’m still wondering about what happens if the backup gets hurt; does the starter get to come in, and if so, does that mean they need to take another game off later?
Also, there’s quite a difference between 81 home games for baseball/41 home games for basketball and the 9 opportunities you’d have to watch your hometown NFL team.
Anyway, I understand the league’s desire to increase revenue with more inventory. I’m mainly interested in the mechanics of this “everyone must have two games off” idea and how it could possibly pass muster with fans in practice.
The NFL first floated the idea of an 18-game schedule a couple of years ago (and, yes, it is absolutely all about trying to wring every dollar possible out of the game). The idea was quietly set aside when the players’ union indicated their opposition to it, because of the increased risk of injury to players – even if part of the proposal gets rid of two preseason games, bear in mind that a team’s starters and other regulars usually play very little during the existing preseason games.
So, this appears to be a bizarre trial balloon, to resurface the idea while addressing the players’ concerns. As has already been pointed out, the fans are likely to think this is a horrid idea, and I don’t see this going anywhere.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t every NBA and NHL team play at least one home game against every other team in the league every year? Each AFC team plays a particular NFC team at home (and vice versa) only once every eight years.
Oh yeah i agree, definitely its “not cool”, especially with the much shorter season, just that IIRC a fan at least once has made the complaint of traveling far to see a certain player, and the response was, they only guarantee your ticket is for a Packers game, not an Aaron Rogers game. Injuries you cant avoid, and under normal circumstances NFL players dont take games off (unless last regular seasons game), so I would assume they would let fans know Rogers’ two games off ahead of time as a courtesy, if this happens.