Serious lack of foresight by the NFL (1 Viewer)

[LawFitz]

Why not push the playoff schedule back by one week and use the space to play games that otherwise couldn't be rescheduled with rearranged byes in season?

 

[Shutout]

I just wanted to pop in and give @spodog props.  Good insight for a discussion here. 

I think the thread didn't get a lot of traction early because of optimism (blind or not) and, in some cases, people just in such disbelief that the season could be played out at all that they didn't stop to think of the nuts and bolts of the matter. 

Going forward, I think the schedule begins to feel like a FF survivor pool. They dodge a bullet here but it is going to get a lot trickier as the season progresses to be able to find places to manipulate the schedule, largely due to their lack of building in contingencies such as additional bye weeks, etc. I think some of this short-sightedness may have been based on the thought at the time that CFB wouldn't take off and they would have a clean slate to themselves or perhaps it was hugely money driven and they know a number of games they need to get to in order to turn a happy enough profit for them this year. 

One of the things I have read as a possible fix if the schedule gets too tight but they are able to keep playing is to move the impacted teams to what would be week 18, 19, 20 for us in terms of FF and bump the playoffs back.  I am sure for those playing in season-long leagues, this would be an unfortunate widget to negotiate. 

 

[spodog]

This is not entirely true. In REGULAR years, player contracts are guaranteed for the entire season for all players on the Opening Day roster and once Week 1 has been completed. However, the league negotiated with the NFLPA for an exception this year in that player contracts ARE NOT fully guaranteed and that players will only be paid for games that are actually played by their team. IIRC, this holds true for players that had fully guaranteed contracts ahead of time. So if some teams only get to play 13 games, they only get 13 game checks. Essentially, every NFL player is on a one week contract that becomes renewed the next week for as many weeks as are played.

Guess this isn't that surprising.    What is surprising is that the NFLPA agreed to this. 

 

[Joe Bryant]

This is not entirely true. In REGULAR years, player contracts are guaranteed for the entire season for all players on the Opening Day roster and once Week 1 has been completed. However, the league negotiated with the NFLPA for an exception this year in that player contracts ARE NOT fully guaranteed and that players will only be paid for games that are actually played by their team. IIRC, this holds true for players that had fully guaranteed contracts ahead of time. So if some teams only get to play 13 games, they only get 13 game checks. Essentially, every NFL player is on a one week contract that becomes renewed the next week for as many weeks as are played.

Thank you. This has always been a good bit different than a regular year. It's the nature of sports (or anything) really for the armchair quarterbacks, including me, to throw out all the things they should have thought about. The reality is I think there was a ton of thought put into this. 

They also are far from locked into it. It's clearly not their preference but they have options. From the rest of the Schefter article: 
 

If the league does need scheduling help that science cannot provide for the coronavirus pandemic, and delays to the season's start eventually become necessary, sources around the league indicated that Super Bowl LV could be pushed back by weeks or even a couple of months, potentially, while not having to make significant matchup changes to the regular-season schedule.

The option of the Super Bowl being moved back provides the NFL with the flexibility it needs, though it is not in the league's plans today, and it prefers not to have any discussion about it.

...

"We're totally focused on Feb. 7 with the regular season kicking off as scheduled," Rob Higgins, president and CEO of the Tampa Bay Super Bowl LV Host Committee, said Thursday. "If adjustments needed to take place, we would be prepared to do that. But we haven't been instructed to do that whatsoever."

The league already has certain cushions built into the schedule. The Pro Bowl could be dropped, buying an extra week for the NFL. Every team shares the same bye week as its Week 2 opponent, according to team sources who reviewed the 2020 schedule on Thursday. This approach was the formula the league successfully deployed during the lockout season of 2011, giving the league further flexibility on an additional week.

But make no mistake about this current schedule: The weekly matchups are set. The reality, however, is that any one of them could serve as the league's opening week, even though the league plans to plant a flag on Thursday night, Sept. 10, with the regular-season opener in Kansas City, Missouri, between the Houston Texans and defending champion Chiefs. But if the season were hypothetically pushed back four weeks, then Week 5 could serve as the NFL's opening week, with the first four weeks being tacked on to the back end of the schedule, giving the league the 16-game regular season it desires.

A potential delay could be longer, but the concept is the same: The Super Bowl could very well provide the flexibility the NFL needs. And if a 16-game season cannot be realized, the NFL might look at a 14-game season, in which the first two weeks of the regular season would become the final two weeks of the regular season and Weeks 3 and 4 would be dropped. There are no divisional games scheduled in Weeks 3 or 4, which happened in Weeks 2 and 4 of the 2011 lockout season and is another built-in clue that the league is prepared if it has to delay the season.

So there are plenty of potential options for the league to explore when it feels it needs to, even if it insists it is not doing that now.

As for the preseason, the NFL is preparing to shorten it to three games as early as next season, when the regular season grows to 17 games. If a shortened preseason kicks off this summer instead, as many now expect, it hardly would be a significant loss.

But for now, the focus is on a 16-game regular season and the Super Bowl on Feb. 7 in Tampa.

So even during a pandemic, the NFL is treating the 2020 schedule just as it treated the start of free agency in March, the offseason program and the NFL draft it managed to successfully execute in April: business as usual, making adjustments to plans only if and when necessary.

"The release of the NFL schedule is something our fans eagerly anticipate every year, as they look forward with hope and optimism to the season ahead," Goodell said in a statement Thursday night. "In preparing to play the season as scheduled, we will continue to make our decisions based on the latest medical and public health advice, in compliance with government regulations, and with appropriate safety protocols to protect the health of our fans, players, club and league personnel, and our communities.

"We will be prepared to make adjustments as necessary, as we have during this offseason in safely and efficiently conducting key activities such as free agency, the virtual offseason program, and the 2020 NFL draft."

 

[Joe Bryant]

Guess this isn't that surprising.    What is surprising is that the NFLPA agreed to this. 

I don't find that surprising at all. The players understood reality and knew the owners couldn't do anything else. 

 

[Anarchy99]

I don't find that surprising at all. The players understood reality and knew the owners couldn't do anything else. 

NBA players made small concessions to continue to play. MLB players made huge concessions twice to play and almost couldn’t agree. The NFLPA saw that and didn’t want to fuss. The battle will be how lost revenue this year plays out in future years with regard to the salary cap. The only thing we know with any certainty is the salary cap was expected to go from $198M to $210M next year, but the two sides agreed it won’t fall below $175M in 2021. I think that will shift the landscape of the league some next year, but lots of people don’t think the salary cap is a big deal to navigate. 

 

[renesauz]

Guess this isn't that surprising.    What is surprising is that the NFLPA agreed to this. 

Doubt they had a choice. If I were the owners, I'd have punted on the season before I set myself up for a scenario where I'd be paying 100% even if they only played a handful of games. this would NOT have been open to negotiation

 

[Joe Bryant]

NBA players made small concessions to continue to play. MLB players made huge concessions twice to play and almost couldn’t agree. The NFLPA saw that and didn’t want to fuss. The battle will be how lost revenue this year plays out in future years with regard to the salary cap. The only thing we know with any certainty is the salary cap was expected to go from $198M to $210M next year, but the two sides agreed it won’t fall below $175M in 2021. I think that will shift the landscape of the league some next year, but lots of people don’t think the salary cap is a big deal to navigate. 

100%. It seemed entirely reasonable for the players and owners to work together on this. The players could already easily see the huge hit from no fans in the stadiums. Seemed entirely like the fair thing to agree to. 

 

[Joe Bryant]

Doubt they had a choice. If I were the owners, I'd have punted on the season before I set myself up for a scenario where I'd be paying 100% even if they only played a handful of games. this would NOT have been open to negotiation

Exactly. 

 

[Anarchy99]

Couldn't they just push the playoff schedule back? Week 18, you play all the make-up games. Could work depending how infections go.

Yes and no. What happens if one team misses three games? Triple header? I still think games without major playoff implications could just be left unplayed. 

 

[CalBear]

Yes and no. What happens if one team misses three games? Triple header? I still think games without major playoff implications could just be left unplayed. 

Sure, depends on how things play out. But there should be some flexibility there. Definitely should work better than trying to rejigger the schedule mid-season and keep it to 17 weeks.

 

[NotSmart]

This wasn't really an "I told you so" rant, Joe, as much as it is an observation (before the season even started) that a very simple scheduling modification could have become part of the NFL's planning process at any point between March and August, and they instead opted to simply schedule the season as if it were any other year. 

My post didn't reference a bubble concept like the NBA uses (I don't think that was feasible for the NFL), nor did it reference their player health precautions.

It was focused exclusively on the single decision to not account for the inevitable in the midst of a Pandemic when creating their regular season schedule.    As of today,   5 weeks after this post, the NFL now has it's first instance of this exact problem and are scurrying with teams, broadcast partners, facility owners and countless others on a re-scheduling crisis that could have been made much simpler.

It's almost impossible to imagine that the NFL didn't consider countless ideas and contingencies, the excellent one in your OP included.

For some reason, they decided to not take the scheduling precautions that you described.

I don't know their reasoning, but I do know the ultimate reason - it's the same one as always...  

 

[spodog]

A month and a half later, Drew Rosenhaus is now coming around to the reality pointed out when this thread started in August:

A Rosenhaus tweet from an hour ago:

the NFL should add two open weeks at the end of the regular season to get in postponed games. This would add bye weeks for teams with postponed games. Players will get paid for the bye. The season will end after 17 weeks for teams who played all 16 games & aren't in the playoffs

 

[themeistersinger]

  Are you buying into the love for this year? Or too cautious?

I think most Bills fans in WNY are totally all-in.  What's the point of rooting for your team and being half-assed about it?  YOLO

 

[jtp1982]

So far though the worst scheduling dilemma in terms of a situation where you will possibly/probably need extra weeks in the season has only involved the Titans, and you have a known violation of league/social distancing guidelines via a group of Titans players practicing off campus in the middle of the first team outbreak, when doing so was specifically not allowed. 
 

It probably will turn out to be the case that a couple additional weeks at the end of the season are unavoidable even for some teams that followed the rules, but this isn’t that situation yet.  This is a group of players on one team putting the entire NFL season in flux because they gathered in person, during a known outbreak on their team, even though doing so was not allowed.

Even the successful bubbles in other leagues have required rigorous enforcement and penalties for those who flouted the rules.  That needs to be the case here, because any system, even if it’s a better system than what we have now in the NFL, won’t work with teams behaving as the Titans have.