Detroit Lions Weblog

The Discussion About a Longer NFL Season Creates New Questions

Recent reports about the NFL extending it’s season another game or two each year opens up a lot of new possibilities for the game, mostly financial, and nearly as many questions.

The viability of playing a 17 or 18 game season, given the massive attrition (see Tim Cowlishaw’s thoughts) that occurs during the average NFL season, would likely mean that teams would be able to field expanded rosters and larger practice squads, since the loss of bodies would only pile up, rather than diminish as each season progresses.

In a league that embraces parity as it’s world view, the expansion of rosters would certainly encourage parity(in other words, dilution of on-field talent). In that process, the league would need to expand the salary cap, if it still exists, to accommodate paying more players, and the increased salary demands of individual players/NFLPA, which would certainly increase with the addition of more games played.

The expansion of the roster would provide additional strategic and competitive demands for each team’s front office, since each team will have to generate contingency plans for an expanded season, and good teams would have to work even harder to remain on top, since the roster expansion would make it even harder to field a high quality roster when injury strikes.

The other change that should occur, would be a shortened pre-season. A shorter pre-season, with additional NFL games would likely bolster league revenue, since any actual NFL game is infinitely more desirable to fans than any pre-season game.

I believe that this scenario would also induce more parity, since teams would enter a season slightly less-prepared than they would normally be accustomed to. Teams would have to condense a lot more preparation, the fourth pre-season game aside, which is more of a throwaway anyhow, into fewer weeks of time to actually do it.

Yahoo Sports Roy S. Johnson believes that teams would have to consider some sort of platoon system, or amended strategy for utilization of Qb’s, due to the increased demands due to a longer season. Johnson also thinks the implications of each player’s role, starting QB and back-up, would be viewed as less hierarchical, and teams could actually exploit opponents with the manner in which they utilize each player.

The one thing I wonder about, given the grueling league schedule, would we actually see teams deciding to make more in-season personnel moves, in-season schematic and coaching changes, and teams immediately responding to fan discontent, with the addition of more games?

For example, the 0-16 ‘08 Lions became a sociological experiment, with each passing week, as fan contempt and a vast sea of empty Ford Field seats gave the season an even darker cast, how would the season’s final weeks have played out as the Lions approached an 0-17 or 0-18 record?

For all of the positive potential financial impact of adding games, how would the league off-set, amid a flagging economy and the degradation of our financial system as we know it, the potential financial losses which could stack up for a poor team, where additional game losses would only serve to fan the flames of a festering, roiling blast of discontent in an angry fan base, or worse yet, only increase the ambivalence or disconnect among those who were only marginally-interested in the first place?