Just do more bye weeks. A longer season with the same (or fewer) games fills the TV schedule fine, increases revenue, and decreases player injuries. Why is this so obvious and never the solution?
This would also move the Super Bowl to Presidents' Day weekend. Which would be great for people that get that day off (I don't, but I can be happy for others, ha).
Washington loved gambling on horse racing, and Lincoln was a very good wrestler in addition to picking up several sports later in life.
Not to mention they lived before the days of presidential protection, so any sporting events they did watch weren’t sectioned off from the rest of the crowd.
The schools around me have always scheduled one of their administration days the Monday after the Super Bowl so kids are off. I always appreciated that growing up and now it also allows me to keep my little cousins up late watching the game and stuff.
This convo thread has to be a meme at this point, because I see these exact comments "Just do more bye weeks" "18 games with 2 byes" "that would push the super bowl to presidents day weekend" in every single thread regarding an 18 game season. If its mentioned verbatim in every thread, it has to be so glaringly obvious....I am mindblown they have not done it yet,
It is a very sensible way to do things if the players agree to increase the number of games. But with how often guys are going down, that's gonna be a real fuckin hard sell, as "inevitable" as it's been made to seem.
But really, they either need to bump it to 18 or go back to 16. There's no other major sport that has an odd number of games in a season. It makes no sense.
College football was 11 weeks for a long time. College hoops teams often play 29 or 31 games too.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wonky about 17 games. Honestly 19 games makes a bit more sense than either 17 or 18 since you’d get:
- 6 Division Games
- 4 Games against an AFC Division
- 4 Games against an NFC Division
- 2 Games against a team from each of the other two divisions in your conference
- 3 Games against a team from each of the other divisions in the opposite conference.
In a 17 or 18 game schedule everything would be the same except there’d only be 1 or 2 AFC-NFC matchups instead of getting all 3
Studies have been done on TNF and there isn't really an injury concern either with that. People adt like TNF causes a bunch of injuries that wouldn't happen otherwise but the data says there really isn't a markedly noticeable difference
Yeah, TNF games are sloppy as hell because teams barely have any time to prepare opponent-specific gameplans, but they're not really that injury-prone.
I still think we should ditch them but it'll be a cold day in hell when the NFL gets rid of a guaranteed national audience for its gutter-quality games.
Is that really true anymore though? This isn’t 15 years ago where TNF was the Titans/Jaguars basement dwelling “El Trashico”. We’ve had about 50/50 good to bad games, i don’t think it’s that different than other days.
Saying you have 4 when your the first game of the season was the season opening game on Thursday feels a little disingenuous.
But generally yes, we both got fucked. We both played Thanksgiving, then each other the next week (so we didn’t even get the mini bye to recover from the first short week), and then we both play on Christmas. That’s 3 Thursday game in 5 weeks. Utter bullshit
The league wants 18 games but the players aren’t going to agree unless the get a 2nd bye week, which the NFL is probably fine with because it extends the NFL calendar
20 week season with your first bye week guaranteed between week 4 and week 9, and a second by week between week 10 and week 15. Nobody gets back to back bye weeks.
That's my biggest thing. If there's an 18 game season you absolutely need to have like a 60 man active roster and a full 53 man gameday roster, instead of the current 53 man active and 45 man gameday. (and then probably 15 practice squad).
Yep… but I also believe additional roster spots will be good for the game- players might actually get time to develop instead of being immediately out of the league.
And the bye weeks are evenly split between teams. No more some teams get byes in Week 4 and others in Week 13.
Everyone plays the first 6 weeks. Half the teams get a bye on Week 7, the other half get it on week 8. Everyone plays weeks 9-13. Teams that got a bye in Week 6 get a bye in Week 14 (those with byes on Weeks 7 get one on Week 15). Everyone plays the last 5 weeks.
On the bye weeks, everyone plays on Sunday. 2 games per time slot (noon, afternoon, evening), 6 games total.
Everyone is making this more complicated than it needs to be… last season to this season injuries have increased, last season to this season they added ads to redzone… let’s take ads out of redzone and then work from there
I don't get this... it's literally just two weeks of the most generous offseason of any sport, it's literally longer than the regular season. If an extra bye isn't going to undo the body damage of another game, that makes sense to me, but having to leave Cancun two weeks early does not
They care a little bit, in that big stars getting injured is bad for their wallet too. They want their star players on the field and I do actually believe they want to take measures towards that.
Less injuries is good for everyone. Fans, players, coaches, owners, TV stations, etc.
The NFL makes most of it's money from TV deals compared to the ticket gates and fans will watch whatever trash game they put on the teevee (I watched Steelers/Dolphins). Only a small subset of games are televised outside of the home market, so the current game supply exceeds broadcasting demand. Spread out the stock of games for more weeks of TV for more revenue.
The NFLPA exists for one reason: to negotiate for more money. It does nothing at all for player safety or anything else. It's an incredibly weak union.
Compare that to, ironically, the NFLRA, which is an absurdly strong (and harmful) union. Probably the strongest in all of sports.
More games still means more injuries even if there is additional time during the season to heal from them. Also there are only 52 weeks in a year and players heal in the off-season, which you are removing 2 weeks from. More games will always mean more injuries and less time to recover.
That’s a really good question. Off the top of my head the answer feels like yes for multiple reasons but now I’m gonna try and figure out the stats on this
Wear and tear from previous seasons can still affect the next season. And it builds up over time.
There’s a reason why RBs like Zeke and Leveon Bell fell off so quickly at young ages after massive amounts of carries while other RBs like Aaron Jones are still good in their 30s because they didn’t get as many carries per year.
Also how most RBs who have one of those elite 400+ touch seasons almost always have a down year and don’t play as well in the following season (see: Saquon this year)
On the Zeke and Bell talk: This is an issue that goes well back to at least the turn of the 2000s.
I spent like 10 minutes looking for it but there was some article titled (or in the body of it?) something like "unless you're Emmitt Smith running the ball [some number like 300 or 400] times a year is bad for your career."
I would be shocked if previous season usage and injury rate weren't somewhat coorelated, but I also think that RB usage decline and injury are different issues. Players are more explosive than they've ever been on both offense and defense so it's not surprising that we're getting more ligament issues as bodies are just pushed to their limit(s).
I still wonder what Bell would've looked like if he 1. played that year he sat and 2. didn't go to the Jets.
Also, they get compensated for the extra risk. The salary cap is increasing on average 11% a year after the switch to a 17-game schedule. More games, more money.
They clearly dont because players are put into hermetically sealed glass ampules, then stored away in a freezing chamber, only to be reopened before the pre-season
My theory is that players have met or exceeded the limits of the human body, and their bodies can’t handle it. Athletes these days have spent their entire lives essentially min-maxing athleticism and explosiveness, and the forces they exert from simply planting their foot and cutting are beyond their body’s breaking point.
Obviously injuries like Mahomes’ and Ertz’ are just bad beats, but I feel like it could potentially be a reason for (what seems like) an ever increasing amount of non-contact injuries.
I’m not a doctor so I may be entirely wrong, but I feel like it makes sense.
If I were the NFL, I'd dangle TWO or even THREE additional BYE weeks at the NFLPA. An 18 game season spread out over 21 or 22 weeks. Would give the league more weeks of eyeballs. Push week 1 up, and better coordinate the bye week with teams playing Monday
/Thursday/Cross-Country/International. It'd be a win win for everyone.
18 games, but at least 4 weeks off during the season. We get a much longer season that way. Only 2 preseason games because that's just a big joke now anyway.
I don't dislike this idea, but I'd want to see some kind of data to back it up beside "seems like there's more injuries nowadays."
I've been watching the NFL since the early 80's. Players have been getting hurt the whole time. It's been a war of attrition the whole time.
And now that these guys are so valuable to teams, there's a lot less "be a man and get out there" cutting careers short and more "He can't play with that injury, he'll do irreparable damage."
Also, I wonder how much of that is countered by faster recovery times due to advancement in medicine. An ACL tear or Achilles tear probably took longer to recover from in the 80s than it does now.
It would be a gigantic study, but I would be interested in learning about the rate of injuries today compared to overtime and potential impact of medicine advancement that includes recovery time but also diagnosis too. We are better at detecting these injuries sooner and maybe preventing them from becoming bigger so just because injuries are up, doesnt mean a whole lot if it’s offset by preventing a bigger injury that before would’ve happened because we didn’t know what to look for or had better diagnostic methods
I think people are playing tackle football at too young of ages and too often. Basketball has the same issue with AAU leagues. The human body can only take so much and they’re getting too much wear and tear at younger ages.
Pitchers in baseball are having their arms explode in year one or two of MLB play because they've been throwing 90+ since high school trying to get to 100, when they're not naturally built to throw heat.
When I was a kid it was different but there were still safegaurds in place, like my little league coach telling me I was going to be benched if I kept throwing my curve because he knew it was going to shred my elbow. Nowadays no one gives a shit and the parents are trying to get their kids to the majors at any cost.
I'm surprised people are even allowed to play tackle football that young still. They were already phasing out dodgeball for being too dangerous when I was in high school. And that was like 15 years ago
But to play devils advocate, some level of contact is needed to teach good habits early and for the body to adapt. Load management is a huge piece of this.
You could argue it’s more important to teach kids to tackle at a younger age when they can’t generate enough force to really hurt each other and you can learn form tackling, vs learning how to hit for the first time in high school when kids are all at different stages of puberty and the faster growers learn they can just hurdle their body to make plays instead of learning technique.
honestly this sounds very accurate that the training has become so intense that it's causing unbelievable stress and strain on the human body
look the Human Body is amazing but there's only so much it can handle and i think your onto something that A LOT of these athletes are pushing it too much yes CTE is a huge concern in the NFL rightly so but one thing that's not talked about enough is chronic leg and back pain these guys are suffering from and will suffer from post career
What I want is more nuance in the discussion. Yes, more games = more injuries, but what does the data say about injury prevalence early vs late in the season?
There's a freak injury rate (broken bones, for example) that you expect to be consistent on a game by game basis. There's also wear-related injuries like muscle strains, and right now we just aren't arguing based on data.
In the beginning of the season there are SO MANY wear-related injuries, as players who ramped up too fast in camp or didn't get enough reps and are thrown into full speed action suffer a bunch of injuries. Is it possible that more injuries happen at this time of the year than later in the season? If so, it would imply that an 18th game doesn't add a ton more risk.
On the other hand, how much do bye weeks help injuries? The common suggestion is to add one more week of games and a second bye week. What does the data say happens to injury rates after bye weeks?
Finally, what about creative ways of increasing game numbers but keeping playing time similar? What if we added an 18th and 5-10 more roster spots but said that every non-specialist (LS, K, P) is required to play no more than 17 games and gave teams the option to tag 6 players to be exempt from the rule for a flat-rate escalator on guaranteed money for the year?
This is what I’ve been saying!! There’s NO REASON we should be having teams play Sunday and then again after only 3 days of rest - literally half the amount they normally get between games. They have bye weeks in the season already, I don’t understand why they don’t use them strategically like this - it’s such a logical move.
I don't disagree at all but how would that work for Thursday Night Football in weeks 2-4? You can't give a team a week 1 bye, and a week 2 or 3 bye would be way too early.
One solution could be pushing TNF back until week 5 or something, but then not every team would get a TNF game.
the biggest support of an 18 game season is the Miami Dolphins because it would make it yet again even less likely their feat of a Perfect season will never be matched
NFL players will sign off on it because it means more money for them. Sucks some guys went down this past week but they'd still get hurt if it was just 16 or even 14 games. Not like they got hurt in the 17th game.
Agreed. It’s football. That may sound ignorant but players have suffered season ending injuries in OTAs and preseason games. Adding a second bye week isn’t going to change that.
Just go back to 16 games. The whole 17 thing is stupid. We have records going back almost 50 years with the 16 game season. 32 teams. 16 games. It all made sense. 17 is dumb.
Could be worse. Remember 2017 when Hurricane Irma forced the Dolphins/Bucs to move their week 1 game to week 11, so they both played 16 straight with no bye?
16 games was perfect. 17 makes no sense. Why would you want an odd number? I’ll tell you why, because they always planned to go to 18. Fuck that. Back down to 16.
I am of the opinion that the less of something you have, the more valuable it is. That’s what makes the NFL season so special, and why I don’t follow the whole NBA/NHL/ and MLB seasons. The individual games just don’t mean as much.
I feel like the more games played you would see shoulder, ribs, and pulled muscles. These knee injuries imo seem more to do with the turf. When your cleats catch in the turf, your knee gives. There is no reason why NFL stadiums don’t have grass.
Also, I didn’t read the article, but it’s disingenuous to use Patrick Mahomes as the article thumbnail when talking against the 18 game season. Mahomes has played an extra 20 games over the course of his career.
All injures so far have happened through 14 games and 15 weeks. This is like if we had 14 games and a bunch of people got injured in week 11 and people said “let’s end the 16 game season talk”
Just do more bye weeks. A longer season with the same (or fewer) games fills the TV schedule fine, increases revenue, and decreases player injuries. Why is this so obvious and never the solution?
18 games, each team gets 2 byes
This would also move the Super Bowl to Presidents' Day weekend. Which would be great for people that get that day off (I don't, but I can be happy for others, ha).
George Washington and Abe Lincoln would've LOVED some gridiron football action to celebrate their birthdays. I know I would
You mean Wrestling Hall of Famer Abraham Lincoln wants to see someone get body slammed.
Dude was a BEAST
Pretty good Vampire Hunter as well
Mr. Battles Confederates
Mr. Bloodsucker Catcher
Abe Lincoln would rather watch WrestleMania than the Super Bowl, for sure.
I think he'd object to it being scripted
Idk, the NFL does have pretty great scriptwriters
I've never been so invested in watching a grown man play dess up and talk to himself...
As long as he wasn't shot during it he seemed fine with scripted entertainment
It seems plenty of modern athletes enjoy it
"Four scores and two safeties ago..."
"And that, my fellow Americans, is Scorigami."
-Abraham Lincoln
I wonder how he feels about the NFC South
It certainly needs reconstruction, although it's not the only place that needs it
Send in Sherman
WHEN YOU TRY ME WITH A SORRY PRESIDENT LIKE DAVIS THAT'S THE RESULTS YOU GON GET!
Mike or Richard?
"There's a little kicking." --George Washington
Lincoln would have definitely avoided Ford Field.
I mean, they genuinely would have.
Washington loved gambling on horse racing, and Lincoln was a very good wrestler in addition to picking up several sports later in life.
Not to mention they lived before the days of presidential protection, so any sporting events they did watch weren’t sectioned off from the rest of the crowd.
I will drink copious amounts of alcohol in your honor if this happens.
The schools around me have always scheduled one of their administration days the Monday after the Super Bowl so kids are off. I always appreciated that growing up and now it also allows me to keep my little cousins up late watching the game and stuff.
Man, even working in automotive with UAW holidays we don't get that day off. And I get like ten more holidays than all my friends lol
Yea im a federal contractor and dont even get that off lol
This convo thread has to be a meme at this point, because I see these exact comments "Just do more bye weeks" "18 games with 2 byes" "that would push the super bowl to presidents day weekend" in every single thread regarding an 18 game season. If its mentioned verbatim in every thread, it has to be so glaringly obvious....I am mindblown they have not done it yet,
It is a very sensible way to do things if the players agree to increase the number of games. But with how often guys are going down, that's gonna be a real fuckin hard sell, as "inevitable" as it's been made to seem.
But really, they either need to bump it to 18 or go back to 16. There's no other major sport that has an odd number of games in a season. It makes no sense.
The players make a percent of revenue, and a 20-week season with 18 games means more revenue. So I am actually surprised the players aren't on board.
If I were a player I'd be pushing for 2 fewer preseason games to compensate, rather than making the offseason shorter. But what do I know.
College football was 11 weeks for a long time. College hoops teams often play 29 or 31 games too.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wonky about 17 games. Honestly 19 games makes a bit more sense than either 17 or 18 since you’d get: - 6 Division Games - 4 Games against an AFC Division - 4 Games against an NFC Division - 2 Games against a team from each of the other two divisions in your conference - 3 Games against a team from each of the other divisions in the opposite conference.
In a 17 or 18 game schedule everything would be the same except there’d only be 1 or 2 AFC-NFC matchups instead of getting all 3
The NFL commissioner suggested it a year ago on pat McAfee during the draft, so it's not coming from nowhere.
Have to wait for the next CBA. I bet they do it. Or at least add more bye weeks.
Excuse me sir, we live in a bucket of crabs society, so I must compel you to only bring everyone else down around you
And one of the byes before every TNF game
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Or 3 games in 12 days.
Cowboys had 4 games in 17 days.
It should be forbidden for any game to be scheduled outside the normal time slots for the audiences of either team. 6am is fucking bullshit.
Read: Europe games should all be night games in Europe, so they are 1pm ET time slot games stateside.
I think that's a little extreme, MNF-Sunday isn't a huge deal.
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Studies have been done on TNF and there isn't really an injury concern either with that. People adt like TNF causes a bunch of injuries that wouldn't happen otherwise but the data says there really isn't a markedly noticeable difference
Yeah, TNF games are sloppy as hell because teams barely have any time to prepare opponent-specific gameplans, but they're not really that injury-prone.
I still think we should ditch them but it'll be a cold day in hell when the NFL gets rid of a guaranteed national audience for its gutter-quality games.
The problem isn’t injuries on TNF. The problem is dogshit games.
With the exception of one or two games per season, the product on the field stinks on Thursday.
Is that really true anymore though? This isn’t 15 years ago where TNF was the Titans/Jaguars basement dwelling “El Trashico”. We’ve had about 50/50 good to bad games, i don’t think it’s that different than other days.
Cowboys have 4 Thursday night games this year. Only 2 on short weeks but it’s still fucked up.
Last year we saw 6 teams play 3 games in 10 days, and another 4 play 3 games in 11 days. Too many games too close together.
Saying you have 4 when your the first game of the season was the season opening game on Thursday feels a little disingenuous.
But generally yes, we both got fucked. We both played Thanksgiving, then each other the next week (so we didn’t even get the mini bye to recover from the first short week), and then we both play on Christmas. That’s 3 Thursday game in 5 weeks. Utter bullshit
—“Saying you have 4 when your the first game of the season was the season opening game on Thursday feels a little disingenuous.”
That’s why I said that admittedly, only two were on short weeks.
It still throws off the scheduling of very schedule oriented coaches and players.
That would be tricky.
Every team playing TNF would have to have played TNF the previous week or have had a bye.
Every team playing MNF would either have to play MNF again or have a bye.
Scheduling like that would get crazy.
And/or international travel
So the team with a week 2 TNF game gets one of their byes after week 1?
You cut TNF to weeks 4 to 16, and make up extra games on Monday and Saturday
I already see the increase in doubleheaders on Mondays so thats def possible.
Saturday, no way during college football regular season.
Legally can't do Saturday games in the USA until like December
That’s where this is going to end up
The league wants 18 games but the players aren’t going to agree unless the get a 2nd bye week, which the NFL is probably fine with because it extends the NFL calendar
20 week season with your first bye week guaranteed between week 4 and week 9, and a second by week between week 10 and week 15. Nobody gets back to back bye weeks.
I’ve seen this structure be suggested multiple times. The NFL could absolutely make it work.
i keep hearing that players dont want the 2 byes since it stretches the season out even further. they just want to be done playing.
Guarantee they change their minds when they see how much the cap will go up with an 18th game
Increased salary cap + increased roster size would help a lot.
That's my biggest thing. If there's an 18 game season you absolutely need to have like a 60 man active roster and a full 53 man gameday roster, instead of the current 53 man active and 45 man gameday. (and then probably 15 practice squad).
Yep… but I also believe additional roster spots will be good for the game- players might actually get time to develop instead of being immediately out of the league.
Right the offseason is their rest time.
And fix the goddamn field quality.
And everyone that plays LV gets a 3rd bye
Also get rid of Thursday games. Players cannot “heal” in time for those. Or have them off bye weeks?
I’d be down for a “Only Thursday after a bye” type rule for sure.
Im surprised this isn't already a thing. Without putting any thought into it whatsoever it seems like a no brainer
The players aren't as into taking a pay cut as you imagine
And the bye weeks are evenly split between teams. No more some teams get byes in Week 4 and others in Week 13.
Everyone plays the first 6 weeks. Half the teams get a bye on Week 7, the other half get it on week 8. Everyone plays weeks 9-13. Teams that got a bye in Week 6 get a bye in Week 14 (those with byes on Weeks 7 get one on Week 15). Everyone plays the last 5 weeks.
On the bye weeks, everyone plays on Sunday. 2 games per time slot (noon, afternoon, evening), 6 games total.
im trying to imagine the chaos in fantasy football if half the league was on bye 4 times a year
Presumably you would treat weeks 6/7 as one week and weeks 14/15 as one week for fantasy purposes.
Seconded.
Everyone is making this more complicated than it needs to be… last season to this season injuries have increased, last season to this season they added ads to redzone… let’s take ads out of redzone and then work from there
Players don't want to lose two weeks of their off season is the issue I often hear
I don't get this... it's literally just two weeks of the most generous offseason of any sport, it's literally longer than the regular season. If an extra bye isn't going to undo the body damage of another game, that makes sense to me, but having to leave Cancun two weeks early does not
I mean if OTAs were two weeks later so it doesn't cut into their actual time off, I'm sure they'd agree. Its probably a negotiating tactic
We definitely don't need even less training and practice for the players. They've already decreased it from what it used to be.
Shorten the preseason again?
Which effects a ton of fringe players that will never get to show their worth unless there is some sort of farm system
Double the size of the practice squad.
Not enough lockers
Halve the size of the lockers.
Double the size of the locker room
Not enough space
Create more space
Space is expanding faster than the speed of light.
Not enough dimensions
Bengals have left the chat
*affects
That's the obvious move.
2 preseason games, 2 bye weeks, 18 games with the Super Bowl falling on President's Day weekend
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They care a little bit, in that big stars getting injured is bad for their wallet too. They want their star players on the field and I do actually believe they want to take measures towards that.
Less injuries is good for everyone. Fans, players, coaches, owners, TV stations, etc.
mmmm, lucrative meat
Flair checks out
The NFL makes most of it's money from TV deals compared to the ticket gates and fans will watch whatever trash game they put on the teevee (I watched Steelers/Dolphins). Only a small subset of games are televised outside of the home market, so the current game supply exceeds broadcasting demand. Spread out the stock of games for more weeks of TV for more revenue.
The NFLPA exists for one reason: to negotiate for more money. It does nothing at all for player safety or anything else. It's an incredibly weak union.
Compare that to, ironically, the NFLRA, which is an absurdly strong (and harmful) union. Probably the strongest in all of sports.
More games still means more injuries even if there is additional time during the season to heal from them. Also there are only 52 weeks in a year and players heal in the off-season, which you are removing 2 weeks from. More games will always mean more injuries and less time to recover.
What about playoff teams? They play an additional 1-4 games. Do they have higher injury rates?
That’s a really good question. Off the top of my head the answer feels like yes for multiple reasons but now I’m gonna try and figure out the stats on this
..it catches up to you
20 weeks, 16 games, 4 byes.
1 survivor!
Everyone injured at this point would also have been injured in a 16 game season?
Read the room, buddy—we’re here to blame the boogeyman for injuries. They didn’t occur during a 16-game season and don’t bother looking that up.
This thread would be vastly different if someone tore their ACL on turf this weekend.
Wear and tear from previous seasons can still affect the next season. And it builds up over time.
There’s a reason why RBs like Zeke and Leveon Bell fell off so quickly at young ages after massive amounts of carries while other RBs like Aaron Jones are still good in their 30s because they didn’t get as many carries per year.
Also how most RBs who have one of those elite 400+ touch seasons almost always have a down year and don’t play as well in the following season (see: Saquon this year)
On the Zeke and Bell talk: This is an issue that goes well back to at least the turn of the 2000s.
I spent like 10 minutes looking for it but there was some article titled (or in the body of it?) something like "unless you're Emmitt Smith running the ball [some number like 300 or 400] times a year is bad for your career."
I would be shocked if previous season usage and injury rate weren't somewhat coorelated, but I also think that RB usage decline and injury are different issues. Players are more explosive than they've ever been on both offense and defense so it's not surprising that we're getting more ligament issues as bodies are just pushed to their limit(s).
I still wonder what Bell would've looked like if he 1. played that year he sat and 2. didn't go to the Jets.
"Injury rates did not differ between the new 17-game regular season (18.4 per 1000 AEs) versus the previous four 16-game regular seasons (19.7 per 1000 AEs; P = .12)"
Also, they get compensated for the extra risk. The salary cap is increasing on average 11% a year after the switch to a 17-game schedule. More games, more money.
Make it a 0 game season and there will be no injuries. Hire me NFL!
49irs would still find a way.
Depends if you think wear and tear from previous seasons can carry over.
They clearly dont because players are put into hermetically sealed glass ampules, then stored away in a freezing chamber, only to be reopened before the pre-season
Something something Mr. Below-Freezing Conditions
Mr. Buscando Cryogenics
They should curb these types of takes until there’s enough data to compare average injuries per week in a 16- vs 17-game season
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My theory is that players have met or exceeded the limits of the human body, and their bodies can’t handle it. Athletes these days have spent their entire lives essentially min-maxing athleticism and explosiveness, and the forces they exert from simply planting their foot and cutting are beyond their body’s breaking point.
Obviously injuries like Mahomes’ and Ertz’ are just bad beats, but I feel like it could potentially be a reason for (what seems like) an ever increasing amount of non-contact injuries.
I’m not a doctor so I may be entirely wrong, but I feel like it makes sense.
More rest is needed. Its already extremely physical sport, add a second bye week instead of more games
Sadly it’ll be a second bye with another game. I don mind it
I think second bye with another game would be a net positive
If I were the NFL, I'd dangle TWO or even THREE additional BYE weeks at the NFLPA. An 18 game season spread out over 21 or 22 weeks. Would give the league more weeks of eyeballs. Push week 1 up, and better coordinate the bye week with teams playing Monday /Thursday/Cross-Country/International. It'd be a win win for everyone.
And for the love of god can we cut at least one pres season week???
They did that when they moved to 17 games, I have no doubt they would cut it down again if they went to 18.
It would be something like
9 home games
8 away
1 international, bye after this
Home and away would alternate year over year I’d guess
18 games, but at least 4 weeks off during the season. We get a much longer season that way. Only 2 preseason games because that's just a big joke now anyway.
I don't dislike this idea, but I'd want to see some kind of data to back it up beside "seems like there's more injuries nowadays."
I've been watching the NFL since the early 80's. Players have been getting hurt the whole time. It's been a war of attrition the whole time.
And now that these guys are so valuable to teams, there's a lot less "be a man and get out there" cutting careers short and more "He can't play with that injury, he'll do irreparable damage."
I've also seen some studies how it's about the fact that kids are specialising in sports way younger than they used to.
Playing football, soccer and basketball etc they use more different micro muscles, compared to just the one sport and same movements again and again
More studies needed but it does seem to make some sense
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Also, I wonder how much of that is countered by faster recovery times due to advancement in medicine. An ACL tear or Achilles tear probably took longer to recover from in the 80s than it does now.
It would be a gigantic study, but I would be interested in learning about the rate of injuries today compared to overtime and potential impact of medicine advancement that includes recovery time but also diagnosis too. We are better at detecting these injuries sooner and maybe preventing them from becoming bigger so just because injuries are up, doesnt mean a whole lot if it’s offset by preventing a bigger injury that before would’ve happened because we didn’t know what to look for or had better diagnostic methods
ACL and Achilles in the 80s were career enders. People just didn’t come back.
I think people are playing tackle football at too young of ages and too often. Basketball has the same issue with AAU leagues. The human body can only take so much and they’re getting too much wear and tear at younger ages.
Pitchers in baseball are having their arms explode in year one or two of MLB play because they've been throwing 90+ since high school trying to get to 100, when they're not naturally built to throw heat.
When I was a kid it was different but there were still safegaurds in place, like my little league coach telling me I was going to be benched if I kept throwing my curve because he knew it was going to shred my elbow. Nowadays no one gives a shit and the parents are trying to get their kids to the majors at any cost.
I'm surprised people are even allowed to play tackle football that young still. They were already phasing out dodgeball for being too dangerous when I was in high school. And that was like 15 years ago
I feel like the only option pre highschool kids should have is flag. Young kids shouldn’t be risking destroying themselves that early in development.
wait they shouldn't have first graders running Oklahoma drills?
I 80% agree with you.
But to play devils advocate, some level of contact is needed to teach good habits early and for the body to adapt. Load management is a huge piece of this.
You could argue it’s more important to teach kids to tackle at a younger age when they can’t generate enough force to really hurt each other and you can learn form tackling, vs learning how to hit for the first time in high school when kids are all at different stages of puberty and the faster growers learn they can just hurdle their body to make plays instead of learning technique.
Kids are specializing at a young age as well which is a huge factor. What we used to think of as late career injuries are occurring much earlier.
honestly this sounds very accurate that the training has become so intense that it's causing unbelievable stress and strain on the human body
look the Human Body is amazing but there's only so much it can handle and i think your onto something that A LOT of these athletes are pushing it too much yes CTE is a huge concern in the NFL rightly so but one thing that's not talked about enough is chronic leg and back pain these guys are suffering from and will suffer from post career
Also if you add a bye week it could actually make it easier to do load management. It adds significantly more recovery time mid-season.
What I want is more nuance in the discussion. Yes, more games = more injuries, but what does the data say about injury prevalence early vs late in the season?
There's a freak injury rate (broken bones, for example) that you expect to be consistent on a game by game basis. There's also wear-related injuries like muscle strains, and right now we just aren't arguing based on data.
In the beginning of the season there are SO MANY wear-related injuries, as players who ramped up too fast in camp or didn't get enough reps and are thrown into full speed action suffer a bunch of injuries. Is it possible that more injuries happen at this time of the year than later in the season? If so, it would imply that an 18th game doesn't add a ton more risk.
On the other hand, how much do bye weeks help injuries? The common suggestion is to add one more week of games and a second bye week. What does the data say happens to injury rates after bye weeks?
Finally, what about creative ways of increasing game numbers but keeping playing time similar? What if we added an 18th and 5-10 more roster spots but said that every non-specialist (LS, K, P) is required to play no more than 17 games and gave teams the option to tag 6 players to be exempt from the rule for a flat-rate escalator on guaranteed money for the year?
18 games is an absolute certainty
Absolutely, having the SB fall on a 3 day weekend is exactly what the NFL wants to maximize viewership
They could just do that. They don’t need to add an extra week of games. Just push the kickoff week back a week.
But think about all the FanDuel users
They’d be unaffected because the number of games would be exactly the same and there’d be no change to the CFB schedule
17 games is fine imo but Goodell wanting each team to play an international game is worse than 18 games imo.
Agreed. The travel to and from us bad enough on top of playing the actual game on top of it
with a huge time change, in addition to playing the prior sunday and likely playing again the following week.
it’s genuinely reckless.
More bye weeks and an auto-bye before TNF. Insane to have teams play on a Sunday and then be expected to play on a Thursday.
This is what I’ve been saying!! There’s NO REASON we should be having teams play Sunday and then again after only 3 days of rest - literally half the amount they normally get between games. They have bye weeks in the season already, I don’t understand why they don’t use them strategically like this - it’s such a logical move.
I don't disagree at all but how would that work for Thursday Night Football in weeks 2-4? You can't give a team a week 1 bye, and a week 2 or 3 bye would be way too early.
One solution could be pushing TNF back until week 5 or something, but then not every team would get a TNF game.
Give me 18 games with 2 bye weeks! My monkey brain needs EVEN NUMBERS!!
the biggest support of an 18 game season is the Miami Dolphins because it would make it yet again even less likely their feat of a Perfect season will never be matched
It's the only thing we've got at this point
An extra 2 Sundays during the season that I don't have to watch the Jets? Sign me up!
NFL players will sign off on it because it means more money for them. Sucks some guys went down this past week but they'd still get hurt if it was just 16 or even 14 games. Not like they got hurt in the 17th game.
I miss the 16 game season and 12 team playoffs (with two teams getting a bye). It felt like the perfect length + playoff structure.
Hard agree.
ACLs tear in week 1. ACLs tear in the Super Bowl. Achilles snap in week 1. Achilles snap in the Super Bowl. And every week in between.
Agreed. It’s football. That may sound ignorant but players have suffered season ending injuries in OTAs and preseason games. Adding a second bye week isn’t going to change that.
As far as I'm concerned I want the old 16 game season and playoff format. Odd numbers are stupid and the season's already long.
100% agree. The longer the season goes the more meaningless games we get. You don’t want to end up like the NBA…
Let's go back to 16 games. It was perfect.
Just go back to 16 games. The whole 17 thing is stupid. We have records going back almost 50 years with the 16 game season. 32 teams. 16 games. It all made sense. 17 is dumb.
I agree so much. Hate the new format
Injuries are going to happen either way. I really don’t see this being a deterrent for the NFL, especially with the risk vs. reward ratio.
MORE BYE WEEKS!!!!!! How the hell does a week 5 bye help anyone???
Supposedly players like early byes because they are halfway through the season when you include training camp
Could be worse. Remember 2017 when Hurricane Irma forced the Dolphins/Bucs to move their week 1 game to week 11, so they both played 16 straight with no bye?
16 games was perfect. 17 makes no sense. Why would you want an odd number? I’ll tell you why, because they always planned to go to 18. Fuck that. Back down to 16.
32 teams, 16 games, with 2 sets of 4-team divisions: it just looks so clean
Get rid of the 7 seed as well.
No they had a perfect schedule with 16 games but greed will kill the golden goose, the nfl is at its worst and lowest quality ever
We're pretty much guaranteed to see an 18 week season with an additional bye week coming soon.
Steelers 9-9 season incoming.
It's 100% a lock with the next CBA.
Go back to a 16 game season
"No."
Just add another bye and expand rosters. Totally doable.
I am of the opinion that the less of something you have, the more valuable it is. That’s what makes the NFL season so special, and why I don’t follow the whole NBA/NHL/ and MLB seasons. The individual games just don’t mean as much.
And let’s end the stupid Thursday night games too
These greedy owners would have a game every day of the week if the players could physically survive it
Counterpoint: Money
Go back to 16. Seeing records like 9-8 triggers me.
16 is perfect.
Have teams get two bye weeks. Problem solved
100% we need to scrap those 18 game season talks
hell I'd be down for it to go back to 16 games
I feel like the more games played you would see shoulder, ribs, and pulled muscles. These knee injuries imo seem more to do with the turf. When your cleats catch in the turf, your knee gives. There is no reason why NFL stadiums don’t have grass.
18 games is happening, 0% chance it doesn't and within the next 5 years.
There's a share share escalator that gives the players a full percentage additional revenue share when it goes to 18 games.
They'll add 1 game, 1 bye week, and remove 2 preseason games so the season is the same length.
In fact let's go to a 16 game season
18 weeks. Two byes. Get rid of TNF.
Also, I didn’t read the article, but it’s disingenuous to use Patrick Mahomes as the article thumbnail when talking against the 18 game season. Mahomes has played an extra 20 games over the course of his career.
Hell, let's go back to 16 games and quit ruining the product.
Let’s go back to 16
Man what
All injures so far have happened through 14 games and 15 weeks. This is like if we had 14 games and a bunch of people got injured in week 11 and people said “let’s end the 16 game season talk”
It was fine at 16 games.
a second bye week and thursday/overseas games only for teams coming off byes.
I don't know about the science here, I just think the 17-game season is ugly and stupid.
The win-loss records look stupid, too. 5-12, 7-10, 9-8. It's stupid.