Imagine if 3 teams are 10-6 and one team has to go home because the other two wild card teams are 10-6. We could make situations like that all day long, sometimes bad teams make the playoffs and sometimes good teams miss it, it just depends on the season. Having one team that gets the bye week makes that bye week much more important, and will keep teams with great records playing all the way to the end of the season. On top of that, the only time a below .500 team has ever made the playoffs was when Seattle did it and that's only because their division was absolute trash that year. Plus, they gave us one of the most entertaining games of the postseason that year with Marshawn's beastmode run.
Yea the system with only 1 bye doesn’t sound like it would go over too well. They might just jump to 8 playoff teams. On the scale of things that really bother me, that wouldn’t even rate. I’d rather have a larger playoff field then a wasted month of useless preseason games. It has some downsides, but it will by no means ruin the game.
There has already been a 7-9 team and a 7-8-1 team make the playoffs so I don't see a big difference with a 8-10 team making it. I think they both also won their WC game
Agree. But nothing about the preseason is about being watchable. Its about getting players ready for the real season and evaluating players. On one hand we complain about two a days being gone, less hitting etc in camp on the other we want just 2 preseason game to prepare for the season? Even with two games as opposed to 4 the starters will wind up playing the same number of snaps. Just will do it in 2 games vs 4. Make no mistake about it. 2 preseason games and 18 regular season games is all about extra revenue to the owners and players
Olorosky has a good breakdown of why preseason is unnecessary. This is definitely where we are headed. Teams will even sell right s to televise the practice to a local channel or broadcast it themselves and sell banner ads .
Marty Lyons has also talked about how things are so different from when he played - back then players played themselves into shape during the preseason because they had other jobs during the offseason, but now they make so much money that football is their year-round job and they stay in shape.
The advantage of a longer regular season is that the “Jets just need to win out” threads probably won’t start until Week 10.
At some point during the week to week grind of the NFL season, everybody plays hurt. A longer season would make it more difficult and there will be just less guys "probable" come game time.
I could see this being what leads to a lockout. The owners seem to be throwing anything they can against the wall in hopes it’ll stick. The players seem to be flicking them off every time.
Well now you'll have more and more sub-.500 teams making the playoffs, and some of these teams will win playoff games too. And maybe some people think this is fun. But I don't. I think it sucks. You should have to earn your spot in the playoffs. You should have to perform well in the regular season to make the post-season. Keep the regular season great.
Some of y'all are so triggered over the dumbest shit. The main problem I have being a stat junky, is single season records would be crushed, and misleading, kind of like when we went from 14 games to 16, and all time records would clearly benefit more modern day players due to having to play more time. This is already an annoying issue that would just get even worse going to 18 games. On a personal level without stats, it would be so much fun. Let's face it. How often thru the decades have we been a really competitive team? Our chances would only go up if the field expanded, and once you're in, anything can happen. It would mean more playoff games as well, which is always great. IDK. I'm not for the move, but I wouldn't lose sleep over it unlike a few people I've seen post in here.
An easy fix would be to add one more playoff team per conference. Then add a second bye week before each teams Thursday night game. That does two things, no more games on 3 days rest and extends the season another week, which increases tv fees.
Well yeah if you replace games with joint practice, basically games, you wouldn't lose anything. But this will help guard against injuries how exactly? Which is the point, isn't it? Inclreading play against opposition isn't an answer
It’s a more controlled setting, they can and probably do practice the no tackling to the ground method, the qbs in a red jersey. But it is still football. There’s always going to be injury risk.
