spodog
Footballguy
The NFL has had a major advantage over MLB, NBA and NHL as the Pandemic and the shutdowns started in March, giving them 5 full months to prepare for a modified set of policies and protocols before starting the season.
When creating their schedule, the NFL charged forward with a business as usual mindset and scattered NFL bye weeks across 8 different weeks, with two of these weeks having only 2 teams on bye.
What they should have done was clustered the bye weeks for all NFL teams into no more than 2 or 3 weeks, and placed them towards the back end of the schedule AND inserted two bye weeks into every NFL teams schedule, similar to the NFL schedule used in 1993. By doing that, they could have prepared for the inevitable COVID-19 outbreaks that will end up decimating a good portion of a roster in Week 3 or Week 4 or whenever, and had a much better opportunity to re-schedule games which will be significantly impacted by this situation into the bye week much later in the year.
As it stands now, if a team (or both teams) on any given weekend in the first half of the season are hit with an outbreak similar to what has happened with the St. Louis Cardinals, the Marlins, etc, the NFL will have no choice but to request the teams play the game as scheduled with whatever roster they can assemble, since the re-scheduling options are virtually non-existent in a 17 week schedule and little chance of two opponents who need a game postponed having the same bye week.
Obviously, the NFL has attempted to optimize for television contract $'s here, since a few late season NFL weeks with the possibility of only 7 or 8 games on the schedule is not appealing from a broadcast standpoint.
Will prove to be shortsighted, and the teams, coaches, players and fans of whatever teams end up with an outbreak will end up on the short end of this decision.
Rant over.
When creating their schedule, the NFL charged forward with a business as usual mindset and scattered NFL bye weeks across 8 different weeks, with two of these weeks having only 2 teams on bye.
What they should have done was clustered the bye weeks for all NFL teams into no more than 2 or 3 weeks, and placed them towards the back end of the schedule AND inserted two bye weeks into every NFL teams schedule, similar to the NFL schedule used in 1993. By doing that, they could have prepared for the inevitable COVID-19 outbreaks that will end up decimating a good portion of a roster in Week 3 or Week 4 or whenever, and had a much better opportunity to re-schedule games which will be significantly impacted by this situation into the bye week much later in the year.
As it stands now, if a team (or both teams) on any given weekend in the first half of the season are hit with an outbreak similar to what has happened with the St. Louis Cardinals, the Marlins, etc, the NFL will have no choice but to request the teams play the game as scheduled with whatever roster they can assemble, since the re-scheduling options are virtually non-existent in a 17 week schedule and little chance of two opponents who need a game postponed having the same bye week.
Obviously, the NFL has attempted to optimize for television contract $'s here, since a few late season NFL weeks with the possibility of only 7 or 8 games on the schedule is not appealing from a broadcast standpoint.
Will prove to be shortsighted, and the teams, coaches, players and fans of whatever teams end up with an outbreak will end up on the short end of this decision.
Rant over.