Thread: If It Were Up To You - Preseason/Regular Season Schedule

There's reports that Roger Goodell is thinking about shortening the preseason and extending the regular season. If it were up to you, what would you do with the preseason and regular season schedules?

I would shorten the preseason down to 3 games, extend the regular season to 18 games and increase the roster size to 65 players after allowing 90 players at training camps.


BTW - I posted an article on my site about this if anyone's interested.

Cheers everyone!!!

I like it the way it is.

I would get rid of the bye week. Other than that the season is fine the way it is now.

I would make it like baseball and have games like everyday, hell even put some double headers in there.

i think they should cut one preseason game with year round training and minicamps and ota's and what not they don't need 4 preseason games. ive heard speculation that instead of the 4th preseason game ther would be a week of organized scrimmage against another team. however the owners are not gonna want to give up a game and all that revenue. there has also been speculation that they will drop the 4th preseason game and add a 17th game which would be an international game so no team has to give up a home game. that would be okay with me but i i think the 32 teams/16 games has a nice balance to it

I like it the way it is, seems really well balanced. I do think it is a shame the NFL charges full price for pre-season, especially the 4th one.

Easy.. Cut two preseason games.

This opens up two games, and the teams need an opponent. I think this would be a great way to get 'random' opponents.

Just draw teams out of a hat (except the team you play can't be from your division). So you could play another conference team. It would be a spice of unpredictability.

Either way. I think that 4 preseason games is way too many!

eh ... it seems to me it is mostly the fans and analysts that complain about the length of preseason. Coaches clearly seem to like it as a way to evaluate talent. Should Erin Henderson of Derrick Pope make the team? Preseason helps make that decision.
I see no reason to extend the regular season personally. I would not be heartbroken if they killed off on preseason game. But all in all ... I think that coaches use it as a valuable tool that us peons watching from afar don't quite grasp.

I'd be for making 2 of the preseason games regular season games.



Raise the final roster to 57 players, final rosters determined before the third game of the regular season.


Keep the bye week, I think players and coaches alike need it. Both for game planning and extra time to heal nagging injuries.



I like Potus' idea of no division opponent, but I'd say: one in conference one out of conference opponent in those first two weeks.


As for the overseas games, not sure I like the idea. The teams are already short on prep time for Sun.-Mon.-Sun. games, or eastcoast/westcoast and back games. That's when players seem more susceptible to injury IMO. Besides, they already tried to expand overseas, remember NFL Europe? It tanked, no need to learn the same lesson twice.

If anything is done then I suspect that it will involve only 1 pre season game getting cut and extending the regular season by one. That extra game will then allow teams to play one overseas game without any loss of a home game - from the fans point of view that is.

Lets not forget that the NFL like many industries is looking for newer markets having almost saturated the home market. This way they take the game to places where they know they will be sold out - such as Wembley last year and this year. If you replace the last pre season game with a regular season game then you can still keep the bye week - this could then be the following week after an overseas game and give the players that break. Course that would also depend on where the overseas games are held - if they are in Canada, Mexico then travel is no different to normal. Only time it would be more beneficial is for games in Europe, Asia.