This week, we’re going to get quite a few regular season games that make up the week 17 schedule.
Ready for the Thad Lewis show in Cleveland? The ‘long awaited’ Terrelle Pryor debut? The ‘Who Wants to be an NFL quarterback this week’ reality show in Arizona?
A lot of the games are going to be nothing more than week 3 preseason games. With a longer schedule, there would still be 2 more weeks of these types of games.
No, with a longer schedule more of these games would matter.
That’s BS. That’s like looking at the baseball standings on the 1st of August and saying, “Well, the Astros haven’t been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs yet…”
With 2 more games, the Cardinals, Browns, or Raiders wouldn’t be playoff contenders.
I’m against an 18-game season, but this is arbitrary. When the schedule is made up, there’s no way to know for sure if the games in the final week will be meaningful. You’ve picked some games that will probably stink, but there are four games that could include two playoff teams and there are a lot of playoff positions that haven’t been decided.
True, but every year there are always quite a few of these meaningless games with 3rd string players on the last week of the season. Expanding the season would add even more of them and make the last couple weeks of the NFL season more like baseball. A bunch of teams out of the race playing minor leaguers and shutting down any player with a hangnail while a few teams battle for playoff spots.
The NFL doesn’t want to have their games look like a late season Astros or Marlins game with 200 people at the game.
But that’s the fault of the Cards, Raiders, and Browns rather than the schedule. With 2 more games, at least 3 divisions (NFC East, NFC West, AFC North, and maybe the NFC North and AFC South depending on tiebreakers) would still be up for grabs, and there would be 11 NFC and 8 AFC teams in contention for the six playoff spots.
I’m against an 18 game season for other reasons, but your logic is faulty here.
If there were three weeks left in the season, a few teams that were just knocked out of the playoff picture would still be alive, so there games would have more meaning. Here’s what I can tell: if there were three weeks left, New England and Denver and Atlanta would be in because they would have clinched their divisions, Houston and Indy would almost definitely be in the playoffs and so would San Francisco and Seattle, but I don’t think any of those four teams would have clinched anything. The NFC East would be wide open (even more than it already is) with three teams within one game of each other, and Pittsburgh would still have a shot at beating Baltimore and Cincy in the AFC North. San Diego and New Orleans and St. Louis and Miami and the Jets might still have a shot at the playoffs even though they’re all under .500. I think Tampa and Carolina would still be alive. It is impossible to prevent meaningless games at the end of the season. Some teams suck and sometimes players get hurt. They’re going to happen no matter what. I’m against extending the season, but you’re cherry picking your examples here. Some games that are currently meaningless would have more meaning if the teams hadn’t been eliminated yet due to the longer season. There would be some more games with teams that are out of it, and more games with at least some playoff implications.
How 'bout if, instead of adding two weeks of meaningless games at the end of the season, they add two weeks of good games to the beginning of the season?
If the baseball season went on through the end of November and was 210 games long, then, yeah, by August 1, or just before mid-season, a below-.500 team would have a shot at making the playoffs.
Brilliant!
I’ve lost all interest in football. It’s a fucking shadow of it’s former self.
As much as I am against a season extension, that shit happens in every sport. It’s perhaps more noticeable in football because of the complete focus on one day a week (for the bulk of games) that is FOOTBALL DAY. That day, with all focus on football, you notice the Raiders-Jags (or whatever) games, where as you don’t notice the Astros-Cubs games, unless one of them is your team, because they are drowned in a daily slate of games that range from meaningless to meaningful.
The 16-game season is already too much of a grueling marathon for the players’ bodies, and the NFL is only starting to address the long-term effects of concussions on their players’ brains. An 18-game season is absolutely the wrong way to go.
Hilarious. Like the dizzy blonde I met in college who was complaining about the added day in February (in leap years). She wanted to add a day in June when the weather was nicer!
Getting back to the OP, a popular NFL cliche is that they want parity. Their dream scenario in the last week would be every team be 8-7 or 7-8, then just about every game would matter.
With 2 fewer games the same thing could be said. The distinction between 14, 16 and 18 games is nothing in terms of how many useless games there are. No matter how long you make the season, X teams in the playoffs and Y teams out means that some teams will have a chance at the end and some will not. If you don’t like 18 games, why not have them go back to 14? Or back to 12, which is what it used to be? Shit, why not just have nothing but meaningful games by having a 32-team playoff tournament?
To my mind the arguments against an 18-game season are twofold:
It’s becoming increasingly obvious, as RTFirefly points out, that football is far more damaging to people than previously known/admitted to, and adding on two more regular season games isn’t going to help matters. I’m already hearing about families who won’t let their kids play football. Even replacing two preseason games won’t help because guys hit each other harder when the games matter.
It again resets the standard for season records. After you go to 18 games someone will throw 53 touchdown passes or run for 2200 yards and you’ll have more records with asterisks next to them.
The argument FOR an 18-game season, of course, is money, money, money, money, and so I’ve no doubt there will soon be an 18-game season.
Ditto, and probably for opposing reasons to yours.
I always hear this about MLB interleague play. The detractors always point out the bad games and never:
The first interleague game I ever went to was a Braves-Jays game, 1997 or 1998 it would have been. Every person in my section was talking about how cool it was we could see the mightly Braves again. People generally LIKE interleague play for what it is, even while it does cause scheduling problems.
If you added two games to the NFL season people would love it. Going from 8 home games a year to 9 offers more opportunities for people to see a game, and two more opportunities (with the extra road game) to just hang at the bar with their friends and eat wings and drink beer. I guess you wouldn’t get more games if they replace two preseason games with games that count, but people better enjoy games that count, anyway. It’s not like the NFL season is long; I think it’s fair to say the NFL is in a state of leaving people wanting more, whereas baseball is as long as it can be and hockey (if it ever comes back) is pretty clearly too long.
I don’t know, especially with a lot of focus recently on player safety, especially from the players themselves, I could see a large number of players striking if “threatened” with an 18-game regular season.
You can have replacement refs (well…sort of, as we saw) and people will still watch the games. They won’t watch the games with replacement players.
The regular season will start the week after Labor Day. So, these extra games are going to be played in lousy weather in many cities. The regular season would run until mid January. Not only would there more snow games, but also the potential of cold rain slop fests in San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle, and even places like Carolina and Jacksonville.
Then, you start the playoffs in mid January, dragging the Super Bowl towards the end of February.