2019 NFL: News & Transactions

E5 Yaz

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But if it's a blind draw, imagine how the NFL Network and ESPN could milk it for yet another offseason TV must-see event
 

joe dokes

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Can't work. Because the worst team from last year would likely pick the second worse team from last year. So that team wouldn't get to pick. And so on and so forth. Half the teams in the league wouldn't get to pick opponent, and of those 16 teams, 8 of them would likely be in the bottom 16 of the previous year's standings.
It works mathematically as a way to add a game. But of course you're right; it's just stupid.

Makes as much sense as anything the NFL will come up with on its own.
 

DJnVa

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Isn't it more likely that it stays the same, but the regular season just starts a week earlier (Labor Day weekend)?
Yep---they'd be eliminating a preseason game if this happened--and opening day on Labor Day weekend would be pretty nice.
 

Rough Carrigan

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The season is already a battle of attrition. Why exacerbate that aspect of it?

NFL: We're serious about having fewer injuries!
Also, NFL: We want to add more games, which we know will increase the number of injuries. Football is family!
 

BaseballJones

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It really is just a naked cash grab, plain and simple. It doesn't actually improve the game. It doesn't help player safety. And because they'd likely have to add in another bye week to account for the international games, it would not shorten the season (even eliminating two preseason games). Of course, the NFL actually wants: more games, more playoff games, and a longer season, seeing as though a longer season means the NFL stays at the top of the sports news cycle for more weeks in the year.
 

Reverend

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As though injuries don’t already have an outsized effect on who wins.

If we add enough games, we can just make it like The Long Walk and the last team able to actually field a complete starting lineup wins.
 

tims4wins

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I'll be honest, when the Pats are in the Super Bowl I don't even watch the halftime show. Too busy hyperventilating and/or getting food since it's hard to eat when stressed. This goes all the way back to XXXVI, and then in person at XXXVIII.
 

Kliq

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Would a 17 game schedule with an extra bye week actually be beneficial to player health in comparison to a 16 game schedule with one bye week? Obviously players would be playing more football with an extra game, but an extra week of rest and recovery could lead to fewer injuries while playing.

The NFL has a lot of issues, but out of all the sports leagues it has the best season length and playoff format. It is pretty much perfect and I wouldn't change a thing about it.
 

joe dokes

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The NFL has a lot of issues, but out of all the sports leagues it has the best season length and playoff format. It is pretty much perfect and I wouldn't change a thing about it.

That's because you're not a multimillionaire looking for a way to squeeze more millions out of the game without regard to anything but how much more money you can make. If you put yourself in an owner's shoes, you'd realize how far from perfect it is.
 

Bunt4aTriple

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I'll be honest, when the Pats are in the Super Bowl I don't even watch the halftime show. Too busy hyperventilating and/or getting food since it's hard to eat when stressed. This goes all the way back to XXXVI, and then in person at XXXVIII.
SSS.

Oh, wait.



As to the holiday weekend superbowl, I hate the idea, but for a first world problem reason. We usually travel as a family for the February break and president's day is the start of the week. Superbowl weekend is the annual ice fishing trip with buddies.
 

Reverend

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I'll be honest, when the Pats are in the Super Bowl I don't even watch the halftime show. Too busy hyperventilating and/or getting food since it's hard to eat when stressed. This goes all the way back to XXXVI, and then in person at XXXVIII.
No shit. Halftime is for workin’. Food ain’t gonna prepare itself.

Would a 17 game schedule with an extra bye week actually be beneficial to player health in comparison to a 16 game schedule with one bye week? Obviously players would be playing more football with an extra game, but an extra week of rest and recovery could lead to fewer injuries while playing.

The NFL has a lot of issues, but out of all the sports leagues it has the best season length and playoff format. It is pretty much perfect and I wouldn't change a thing about it.
I take your meaning and think it’s an interesting question with respect to how long a break is needed for recovery to a degree that it lessons risk of injury.

In the big picture for the NFL, though, I would expect that the truth is that the 16 game season is already too long for humans, and if the second bye is important for health reasons on a 17 game season, then it should probably already be there for the current 16 game season.
 

Mugsy's Jock

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Why not add a bye week, but keep the 16-game season?

Players get an extra week of rest, owners get an extra week of TV revenue (which is the real cash cow here, not game tickets and concessions).
 

axx

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Why not add a bye week, but keep the 16-game season?

Players get an extra week of rest, owners get an extra week of TV revenue (which is the real cash cow here, not game tickets and concessions).
That seems far too logical.
 

Reverend

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Why not add a bye week, but keep the 16-game season?

Players get an extra week of rest, owners get an extra week of TV revenue (which is the real cash cow here, not game tickets and concessions).
Too obvious.
 

Average Game James

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I think 17 games with an extra bye week is a reasonable compromise, and I like the neutral site idea for the extra game as it eliminates the imbalance for teams that have “home” games in London, Mexico City, etc. If the NFL wants to grow its international presence, that burden should really be shared by all teams (and season ticket holding fans) equally.

Not that it would ever happen, but somewhere I read a proposal to expand the season, but limit each individual player to no more than 16 games (exception for punters/kickers). The game theory involved with how to approach sitting star players would be amazing, creates more opportunities to get live game reps for younger players, and selfishly as a Pats fan I feel like Bill would be massively better than the rest of the league at leveraging matchups in figuring out where to sit guys for the one game a year.
 

E5 Yaz

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Surprised Fox doesn't have The Masked Singer contestants at halftime
 

Soxy

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Why not add a bye week, but keep the 16-game season?

Players get an extra week of rest, owners get an extra week of TV revenue (which is the real cash cow here, not game tickets and concessions).
NFL already tried an 18 week season with 2 byes for each team in 1993. Everybody hated it.

Granted, the fact that people in 1993 hated it probably shouldn't matter a whole lot to the people of 2019. But that's the hand-wavy reason people always give: "They already tried that once and nobody liked it."

I think most NFL fans today would be pretty okay with an 18 week, 16 game season.

Edit: After writing this, I remembered reading an article not too long ago that mentioned the infamous 1993 double-bye season. It was earlier this year on The Ringer. The author lays out a good argument that it's worth re-visiting an 18 week, 16 game schedule. It's also worth mentioning, as the article does, that the first season to even have one bye week was 1990. The concept of your team having a week off in the middle of the season hadn't become fully embraced by NFL fans as the new norm. A lot of people hated having bye weeks at all, let alone two. Times have changed.
 
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Average Game James

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NFL already tried an 18 week season with 2 byes for each team in 1993. Everybody hated it.

Granted, the fact that people in 1993 hated it probably shouldn't matter a whole lot to the people of 2019. But that's the hand-wavy reason people always give: "They already tried that once and nobody liked it."

I think most NFL fans today would be pretty okay with an 18 week, 16 game season.
Part of the issue in 1993 was it was very poorly implemented. Some teams had byes separated by only 3 weeks with both early in the season. Assuming some reasonable rules for scheduling, that issue could be eliminated. Having 32 teams instead of 28 helps as well since you wouldn’t end up with weekends showing barely any games. Of course, there’s still some random chance you end up with a bunch of crap games with all the good teams on bye in a given week, but that’s already a bit of an issue today. You can try to guess what will be a good game, and then end up with a lot of prime time Cleveland Browns early in the year...
 

Montana Fan

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While I'm not excited on the players' health aspect of the proposal, having lots of neutral site games around the country and/or around the globe isn't a bad way of spreading the NFL gospel. And it's not *that* difficult to tweak the scheduling formula to add an extra game in a relatively balanced way - e.g.: schedule one more inter-conference game against a team that finished in the same place in its division as you did in yours (so, e.g., maybe this year the Pats would have played last year's winner in the NFC North or South or West in addition to everyone in the NFC East). As long as they also cull at least one exhibition game - and possibly two - from the schedule, I'd be OK with this. Because I do actually like football, and wouldn't mind seeing the season start up a week earlier...or better yet, end a week later.
The season is already a battle of attrition. Why exacerbate that aspect of it?

NFL: We're serious about having fewer injuries!
Also, NFL: We want to add more games, which we know will increase the number of injuries. Football is family!
As though injuries don’t already have an outsized effect on who wins.

If we add enough games, we can just make it like The Long Walk and the last team able to actually field a complete starting lineup wins.
If they expand the season, and even if they don't, I've long believed they should expand the gameday rosters. Say 6 additional players per team, which would allow for better rotations in the lines and more specialty type players. I don't think you can cap the number of plays a guy can play per game but more players on the roster would allow coaches to be more protective of the rest of the team.
 

Gunfighter 09

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So the compromise could be:

-expanded rosters - more jobs for players, perhaps going up to 58, with 53 active on game day
-two bye weeks per team making an 18 week season
-the 17th game giving 16 overseas / neutral site games every year, so one for each for weeks 2-17 of the season
-Opening day football on Labor day weekend and the Super Bowl on President's day weekend.
-The 17th game being a "rivalry" game from the opposite conference every year works for most of the league just based on some obvious factors:

Obvious proximity
Rams / Chargers
Cowboys / Texans
Giants / Jets
Bucs / Phins
Ravens / Skins
Raiders / Niners (even post move)
Eagles / Steelers

Close proximity:
Colts / Bears
Browns / Lions,
Falcons/ Titans

Cool History:
Seahawks / Broncos would be a cool old AFC West rivalry with Super Bowl history,
Jags / Panthers came into the league together

The rest:

NFC: Vikes, Saints, Cards, Packers
AFC: Pats, Bengals, Bills, Chiefs

My stab at giving these 8 a permanent rival:

Chiefs / Saints - holy shit this would be fun as long as Andy Reid and Sean Payton are there
Pats / Packers - the battle of traditional champions
Vikings / Bills - the annual battle for who plays in the coldest city
Bengals / Cards - no one cares
 

Mugsy's Jock

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NFL already tried an 18 week season with 2 byes for each team in 1993. Everybody hated it.

Granted, the fact that people in 1993 hated it probably shouldn't matter a whole lot to the people of 2019. But that's the hand-wavy reason people always give: "They already tried that once and nobody liked it."

I think most NFL fans today would be pretty okay with an 18 week, 16 game season.

Edit: After writing this, I remembered reading an article not too long ago that mentioned the infamous 1993 double-bye season. It was earlier this year on The Ringer. The author lays out a good argument that it's worth re-visiting an 18 week, 16 game schedule. It's also worth mentioning, as the article does, that the first season to even have one bye week was 1990. The concept of your team having a week off in the middle of the season hadn't become fully embraced by NFL fans as the new norm. A lot of people hated having bye weeks at all, let alone two. Times have changed.
Like you, I'm guessing more fans have grown to appreciate the physical challenges associated with playing a 16-game season in 17 weeks a lot more in 2019 than they appreciated in 1993. Maybe only sophisticated snowflake fans give a shit about the long-term effects on player health, but I bet everybody would like to have more opportunities to see their entire roster available to suit up on a weekly basis. An extra bye week gives players more time to recover from things like bruised ribs and low-grade sprains and reduce the chances players miss games.
 

Rough Carrigan

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Like you, I'm guessing more fans have grown to appreciate the physical challenges associated with playing a 16-game season in 17 weeks a lot more in 2019 than they appreciated in 1993. Maybe only sophisticated snowflake fans give a shit about the long-term effects on player health, but I bet everybody would like to have more opportunities to see their entire roster available to suit up on a weekly basis. An extra bye week gives players more time to recover from things like bruised ribs and low-grade sprains and reduce the chances players miss games.
Maybe part of the objection was that it made for shitty games on even more weeks when you've got some of the good teams sitting out on their byes? Not sure.
 

Deathofthebambino

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Am i missing something here. Josh Gordon was fined over 10k for the facemask penalty he got (the same one where he injured his finger and had to get it taped up). I saw the play, and literally thought nothing of it. According to this article, there were a handful of other fines given out, and I saw most of those plays, and Gordon's was nothing like it. If you are going to fine Gordon for that facemask, i'm curious to know what facemask penalthy would not elicit a fine? Shit, I saw a half dozen this weekend that were far more egregious, and had a higher potential for injury than his did? I hope the NFLPA fights this one on his behalf, because it makes no sense.

https://www.si.com/nfl/patriots/news/gordon-finer-for-face-mask-in-week-3-vs-jets/
 

bankshot1

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The rest:

NFC: Vikes, Saints, Cards, Packers
AFC: Pats, Bengals, Bills, Chiefs

My shot

Packers-Chief: commemorates the 1st Super Bowl
Vikes-Bills-The Super Bowl Futility match-up
Saints-Pats: This one writes itself, Saints versus Sinners
Bengals-Cards-no one cares
 

InstaFace

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DeadlySplitter

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kenneycb

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Just got it on my phone but Burfict is suspended the rest of the year for his hit on Doyle yesterday. Have to imagine that is going to be appealed.
 

johnmd20

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Burfict has realized 2.2 million dollars in fines and lost pay for his dirty hits over the course of his career already. That doesn't include what he's going to lose this year.

He simply cannot stop himself. The penalties have done nothing to curtail the behavior. He can appeal but, man, I hope he loses it. That hit yesterday was really awful. It would have been awful in 1980. In 2019, it's beyond the pale. Him running off the field yesterday, smiling and laughing, is just proof that nothing can stop him IF he's on the field. He will head hunt.
 

OurF'ingCity

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He simply cannot stop himself. The penalties have done nothing to curtail the behavior. He can appeal but, man, I hope he loses it. That hit yesterday was really awful. It would have been awful in 1980. In 2019, it's beyond the pale. Him running off the field yesterday, smiling and laughing, is just proof that nothing can stop him IF he's on the field. He will head hunt.
Yeah, I'm not sure whether he falls more into the Gordon mold (guy who truly wants to better himself but just can't help himself) or the AB mold (utter, irredeemable headcase), but either way he probably needs to seriously consider retirement at this point, as much for his safety (some of those hits are as dangerous to him as to the player he is targeting) as for that of the rest of the league.
 

RedOctober3829

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Reading some rumblings that the Patriots may be working on a Stefon Diggs trade. Unless it's a significant salary going the other way, there's no way this could happen. In fact, they have only $1.2 million in space so they have next to no room to operate.