Making the NFL Season Safer

The NFL is a very dangerous and physically demanding sport. Injuries like torn hamstrings and knee ligaments are commonplace. Thursday Night Football isn’t popular among players because of rest issues. Richard Sherman outlined that last year in an article for The Players Tribune. So, by adding more time for players to recover would be something that the players would surely rejoice in having. It would provide a wide array of benefits, and not just for the players; the league and its fans would reap from it.

How could this be accomplished? Well, the league could start by adding in another bye week for teams, making the season 18 weeks. Of course, this is in a perfect would where collective bargaining doesn’t exist. In this new schedule, the regular season lasts 18 weeks with every team getting two bye weeks and the Pro Bowl is scrapped because players aren’t a fan if it in order to make sure the Super Bowl is the first Sunday of February.

This means that there is no longer a gap between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl. To make sure it stays, the NFL can play the Hall of Fame Game the Saturday the rest of the NFL plays their first pre-season game, which would occur the next day. Alternatively, all teams play the weekend of the Hall of Fame game, and the regular season starts a week earlier, meaning the Post Season schedule remains as is today. Or, finally, they could simply scrap the final week of the Pre-Season.

Again, this is in a scenario where the idea of collective bargaining doesn’t exist, but it does meaning the league would have to get something out of it or the players would have to give something. Something big because it means less teams are playing each weekend, hence fewer games being played, meaning less money, all in addition to the fact that they no longer have the Pro Bowl.

By adding in another bye week, players are more rested coming into the end of the season. This means, among other things, players would have the ability to put more effort in and the risk of injury goes down. The latter has other benefits too, as the risk of injuries that cause players to miss the postseason or the start of the next season goes down, more people are inclined to tune into or come to a game. It also means fewer Derek Carr type injuries where a Super Bowl contender (who already qualified for the playoffs) falls flat on their faces in the Post Season due to a big injury. This leads more interesting matchups, higher TV ratings, and in general, a more interesting Post Season.

For me at least – but presumably lots of others – I didn’t watch much of the AFC Post Season in January because the path to the Super Bowl was wide open for the Patriots. When Carr got hurt, it immediately squashed the Raiders chances of upsetting the Patriots, already the clear favorite in the weak conference. In addition to Raiders, the Texans were without a quarterback. By having star players injured for the post season, fan interest goes down exponentially.

A final benefit to the league gets by adding in a second bye week: career ending injuries at the end of the season go down. No one wants to see a player have their career ended by force, let alone a really bad injury. As a fan, I would much rather see a player retire because of family, they are just done with the sport, or some other personal reason, and not because they are forced out. While all end of season injuries many not be career ending, but they can really hamper a player until they get forced out or their play drops of a cliff. Look what happened to Peyton Manning.

Even if harmful injuries don’t happen at the end of the season, by giving players more rest during the season, the NFL is not only helping themselves in terms of fan interest, they are aiding players morally and physically. Football is a very dangerous sport, and the NFL doesn’t want to be known as an employer who makes their employees jobs even more dangerous.