here is an idea: cut preseason games down to 2. start season mid august, with night games only. each team gets 2 byes, one of them the sunday prior to a thursday night game. game 17 is played either labor day weekend, columbus day, or thanksgiving weekends. thanksgiving games are one afc home, one nfc home, one interconference ( home rotating). game 17 is the ' traddtional rivalry' game, every year same (afc vs nfc) teams. home game rotation, so that determines whether you have 8 or 9 home games each year. rivalries can be geography based, history based, or even based on rivalries from another major sport. proposed: jets-giants, bills-lions, ravens-redskins, eagles-steelers, fins-bucs, saints- jaguars, falcons- titans, cowboys-texans, panthers-patriots, colts-bears, vikings-chiefs, packers-browns, broncos-cardinals, raiders-49ers, rams-chargers, and seahawks-bengals ( until possible expansion). could also match up seahawks -patriots ( sb history), with bengals-panthers ( geography).instead. the geography creates more fan interest as well as easier travel for visiting fans. what does the board think? is the NFL forward thinking, or not?
The nfl is trying to get to having the super bowl on Presidents’ Day weekend. You put good thought into your idea but didn’t get to where they want to be in the calendar
fair enough, but the calender ( game schedule)i can be adjusted, bye weeks , spread out playoff rounds, etc.. i often wonder if having college football played in spring semester, a june draft, and only pro football in the fall would be a much better system, but that would require the feds to legislate it.
one more thing: NO playoff byes. 1-8, 2-7, 3-6, 4-5 in the first round. the extra 4 playoff games funds the players health and pension fund. especially for past veterans who were not as well paid and got slaughtered by inflation. doubt the players union would oppose that!
I think every team will play one international game. Teams will have 8 home games, 8 away games, and one international game. It would be nice if they could tie this in to a team's bye week, say play in England then get the next week off.
The NFL should cut the schedule to maybe 12 games, similar to the NCAA. They'll never do it because of the TV money but going from 16 to 17 in the face of the concussion crisis was pure hubris on their part. It's like the owners do not understand where the national mood is on football right now. They're in danger of turning professional football back into a regional sport.
Football is consistently the top rated tv program whenever it’s on. Fantasy football has never been more popular with daily fantasy now in the mainstream and states are opening sports books. There’s is no chance it becomes regional. It’s too interactive at this point.
I think people can't wait for sports to start up again. While their are certainly more important things going on in the world, sports provides a nice distraction from the realities of life. I miss watching my teams play (Isles and Yanks). Hopefully football season can go on so I watch the Jets, even though we might not be allowed inside the stadium.
I don't think football is quite at that point in terms of having a negative national mood. The product is, however, getting progressively worse and in danger of seeing the talent pool shrink a lot in about a decade. We're just now seeing parents hold their children out of the sport because of CTE and all of the concussion and overall injury concerns. If you reduce the NFL talent pool by 25% over the course of the next decade, the league may struggle more than anticipated. In a honesty, I think you could fix this by keeping children from playing the game until they're a bit older and a bit more mature. Age 12-14 is a good sweet spot to introduce the game to kids. Not to mention the NFL keeps reducing practice times, increasing penalty flags, overprotecting their golden child quarterbacks and raising prices to their in game experience. At the same time, @FJF is right about the current state of the league. It's a money printing organization at the moment.
Great suggestion, 12 games is perfect! You would see everyone’s best effort every game as they would all be relevant and important games I also think you could do the staggered scheduling like college does. 12 games in 15 weeks. Stagger out the bye weeks. The quality of play is so much better when teams are coming off bye weeks. You would have some great games
I agree that exposing children at the ages they do to the severe contact is a risk many parents are re-thinking. But waiting until kids are 12-14 years old to introduce them to the game eliminates the age span when kids learn the most and quickest, especially in terms of physical skills, so while I agree with your suggestion, they also need to find a way to teach the game and the physical skills without the contact. In soccer they've moved to small-sided games where kids can have more touches and movement without as much contact, maybe there's a way to do this with football. Also, we could be developing movement/body control programs that employ games - not football/soccer/baseball-specific, but using components of those games to develop the muscle memory that would later be used. As for the length of the season, obviously the NFL isn't going to reduce games since they just added another and more playoff games. But I agree they SHOULD go back to 12 games. One other idea which I've pitched before, and again will never be done by the NFL, is to return to having players play two-ways and restrict equipment to a helmet, protective cup and spikes. Eliminate the ability of players to use their equipment and bodies like weapons, as well as introducing the element of the threat of "payback" if a player on defense lays out a vicious hit - next series he'll be on offense and on the receiving end. I think we'd see a LOT less injuries.
I don't think we'll see pre season cut down to just 2. 3? Definitely. But the coaching staffs will push back hard against only two preseason games I know this will never happen but if you allowed defensive players to actually DEFEND receivers...look the other way on a little bit of holding, hand-fighting, jamming them, that will slow down the offensive players a little bit and reduce the amount of catastrophic over the middle collisions. It's unfathomable I know to thing about slowing the game down slightly and balancing it out defensively. The NFL loves those 51-48 shootouts...but you know when defensive backs basically have their hands tied and these cheetah like receivers just run free all over the secondary...what do you think is going to happen when somebody hits them. It looks like a car accident. Going to a more balanced game and slowing things down a bit in the secondary is one sure fire step to making things safer.
here is where we disagree. there are cities here in the us that should get a regular season game BEFORE any international site does. portland, san antonio, memphis, san diego, oakland, hawaii/honolulu, st. louis, milwaukee, columbus, hartford, charleston, orlando, birmingham. maybe even syracuse or louisville types.
thinking that 2 preseason games, equal one regular season game. game 17 essentially replaces the former 3rd preseason game.
there should be no byes in the playoffs, and the additional revenue will go to the players fund. if a team finishes #8 in a conference due to a rash of injuries, they still get a chance to salvage a part of their season.
All those cities would be more fair to have a game. But unfortunately they don't advance the NFL's goal of establishing a major presence in Europe and Mexico.
Have you seen what has happened to high school football in recent years? There are regions where it is going strong and there are regions where it is dying out. The NFL will likely follow suit with some lag.