With training camps now underway, I’m starting a new thread.
A few initial notes:
Packers QB Jordan Love is attending training camp, but not participating in practices, as his agent continues to work with the Packers on a new contract. Packers GM Brian Gutekunst is publicly optimistic that they’ll get a deal done soon.
The NFLPA and the league are in “very high-level” talks to add an 18th regular-season game to the league schedule.
Green Bay just resigned Kenny Clark to another three years. While the details aren’t public yet, I can’t imagine Gute/Ball shelling out $70m without being very close with Love’s contract. Most recent rumors have him somewhere in the $58m a year range. He’s also the only major piece not locked up through 2026 at a minimum, so it shouldn’t be too painful on the cap after this season, but waiting until after the Goff and Lawrence extensions was expensive.
18 games. 20 weeks. Super Bowl on President’s Day weekend. Let’s go.
Main problem with that idea: either you get rid of the extra week before the Super Bowl (which has been tried), or Week 1 is Labor Day weekend - and I can already hear the colleges complaining about that.
Slightly smaller problem: you tell half of Alabama and Georgia that the Super Bowl and the Daytona 500 are scheduled for the same day.
Which was opening weekend for the NFL until about 25 years ago, when they decided that having their first slate of games on a holiday weekend, when many fans were either traveling or engaged in outdoor activities, was bad for TV ratings.
Change requires innovation. If the NFL is going to grow, they are going to need to break some stuff.
The Daytona 500 can go screw. When you’re the 800-pound gorilla you might as well behave like one. If NASCAR fans throw a fit, then NASCAR will change. I’m sure the broadcaster would pick the Super Bowl over the race for broadcast every time. Tradition be damned.
And yeah, Labor Day is a tough one, but College Football seems to survive just fine with all those fans boating out on the lake. Maybe figure out a way to make all the opening weekend games local broadcast night games. Or just accept that you might lose a dozen percentage points on viewership for one of your games. The extra week is all net-new revenue so maybe it’s just slightly diminished. Or hell, steer into it and make NFL Tourism a thing over Labor Day weekend. Lots of fans already take road trips for road games, maybe you can really promote NFL games as destination events. The NFL starts and ends on 3-day weekends.
Not for this year, I assume.
What happens if this is approved? I assume the players don’t get automatice 1/17 raises.
Definitely not for 2024. That schedule and the related dates is etched in stone, barring some catastrophic event. The article indicated that they are still in very early stages of the talks, and doing so would ultimately require a revision to the union’s collective bargaining agreement with the league. 2025 at the very earliest, and it might well be later than that.
And that’s what is undoubtedly the crux of the negotiations. “You want us to play another game, pay us for it.” The league and the teams want the revenue from another regular-season game; the players will want their share of that revenue.
Meanwhile…
And I keep getting Jordan and Julian’s names mixed up in conversations.
Anybody watching the Hard Knocks offseason show on HBO? I’m finding it anticlimactic since I actually know what’s going to happen because I remember it. Free agent signings and draft picks are pretty high profile developments for a team. As opposed to the regular Hard Knocks where it’s training camp and preseason that nobody pays attention to so it seems fresh and interesting. Especially with the typical focus on the rookies who will just barely make or miss the 53-man cutoff.
When I first saw in the cable guide that it was the Giants I was like wait, what? The Giants have always said they would never let anyone in the locker room so they would never be on Hard Knocks. Last I checked John Mara was still alive, so how is this happening? But then it turns out to just be offseason, focusing solely on the general manager, coaches and scouts.
I think I would be finding it more interesting if it were the Jets or somebody relevant to my fantasy team, where I would at least be surprised by some of the moves. But I don’t think I would care enough to watch if it were just some random team I wasn’t particularly interested in. It doesn’t have the general appeal of the regular Hard Knocks, mainly due to the lack of players on the show.
The Bears have said the same thing…yet here we are.
They recently went through this with the move to 17 games. I’m too lazy to look it up, but there’s obviously a recent precedent here. I would be surprised if this were actually a major sticking point since they’ve done exactly this in the last handful of years.
The Bears are different as they were forced under the Hard Knocks rules. This seems to be something the Giants volunteered for.
Maybe, but that wasn’t the point. The NFL has the power to force even the most intransigent teams to participate. Perhaps the Giants volunteered for this to try and further delay the inevitable with the OG series.
That seems very highly likely. And you’re right about the NFL being able to force the issue. Another example of that kind of pressure would be the Packers playing in London.
Reports are that the Packers have reached a new deal with QB Jordan Love: 4 years, $220 million. According to ESPN, it makes Love (for now) the highest-paid QB in league history; it includes a $75 million signing bonus, which is also the biggest in history.
It’s bigger than the contract extension which Tua Tagovailoa signed with the Dolphins earlier today: 4 years, $212.4 million.
I hope it works out for the Packers. Love seemed like the real deal to me last year.
Brock Purdy is probably the next to get a big deal.
That’s actually less than I was expecting. Sign me up.
Jordan Love is now the highest-paid QB in NFL history?
How many Super Bowls has he won?!
FWIW, Love’s new base salary, $55 million a year, is tied for the most ever with Trevor Lawrence and Joe Burrow, and just ahead of Tagovailoa, Jared Goff, Justin Herbert, Lamar Jackson, and Jalen Hurts. None of them have won a Super Bowl.