I'm know I'm not alone when I say we all LOVE Football. Can't get enough of the sport. Preseason, Regular Season, and of course the playoffs ending with the Super Bowl. It's one of, if not, the most anticipated sport of the Fall season.
But the NFL is currently discussing the idea of adding more playoff teams, adding more regular season games, and shortening the preseason as a result.
Goodell talks about in this article:
First of all, if there's anything they should consider getting rid of, it's these Thursday Night Games. The lineup is usually bad, and players are clearly beat up due to the short week. Save Football for Sundays and Mondays ONLY.
I already don't like shortening the preseason. Coaches need time to evaluate young players and decide who makes the final roster. After 6 months off from Football, players need to get time to work with the offense again, adapt to new coaches, new players and get back into the feel of everything. From a fan perspective, maybe they should stop charging regular season prices for a preseason game.
Adding more games to the regular season making it 18 games? I love my Football, but even that is a bit of overkill, especially for the players. More games = more injuries. Players get injured often as it is. Throwing in more games will increase the probability of injuries. Goodell loves to promote player safety, protecting the Quarterbacks, limiting defensive players to how they play, and now he wants to add more games where there is an increased chance of injuries. What a guy. I can understand the whole concussion scare thing and penalizing players for helmet to helmet, but Football is a physical contact sport. It's becoming less and less of that every year. The format right now is fine the way it is.
Lastly, I don't like the idea of adding more teams to the playoffs. 4 Division Winners and 2 Wild Card teams is fine. The playoff structure is perfect the way it is. There is no need for a 12 team playoff format. Why? Because there've been years where 8-8 teams, and more recently, 7-9 teams can make the playoffs. Expanding the format would make something like this too common.
They'd probably format like this: The 4 Division winners get bye weeks in the first weekend, and the 4 Wild Card Teams from each conference would play each other with the winner advancing to the Divisional Round.
These Playoffs are supposed to be a challenge to get in. Teams need to earn their spots in. You don't hand out extra spots and let lowly, undeserving teams in the playoffs. I can understand people saying more teams brings in better competition. I can even understand bringing up the years where teams missed out because of tiebreakers or what have you, and teams that got into the playoffs get blown out, questioning whether or not they deserved to be there in the first place.
A common argument people are gonna throw around are the 7-9 Seahawks hosting a playoff game, and the 8-8 Chargers making the playoffs in 2008, while the 11-5 Patriots missed the playoffs. No matter what record, the division winner is entitled to a Home playoff game. You can't change that because it makes fighting for the division look meaningless. Also, people were so sure The Saints were gonna stomp on Seattle. If you're as good as you say, you should be able to move fast a 7-9 team that wasn't even playing that good in the season to begin with.
In my opinion, adding more teams cheapens the overall quality of the playoffs. More and more teams with losing records would now be in the playoffs. It sucks when an 11 win team doesn't make the postseason, but I would rather that than having a sub .500 team make the playoffs.
This is just another way for Goodell to make money. Nothing more, nothing less.
One more thing, if you're gonna "one of those people" and bring up "Well....the NFL expanded from 14 games to 16 games. What makes this any different?"Well, to me, 16 games just seems right. 14 was too short and with that there were no Wild Card teams and no bye weeks for the #1 and #2 seeds. In short, the old NFL playoff format was like the current MLB playoff format; 3 Division winners and 1 Wild Card team. Everything about the NFL Structure right now is perfect. 4 months of Football including the preseason, 1 month of playoff Football and then Super Bowl in February. It all seems to work.
Or...you coud just read this link and see what the "experts" had to say.
Read. Comment. Share.
By: Gerald "Showstopper" Prophete
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