NFL: 2020 NFL off-season news & notes discussion thread (Cowboys & Texans players have COVID-19)

[Shockmaster]

I am going to go ahead and say its a bad idea to have football during pandemic. But money triumps all and I gotta accept that.

So, shouldn't NFL allow bigger roster for one season to deal with any potential coronavirus cases?

They should have had a bubble plan at the very least for each conference. Granted that would have eliminated interconference games, but they could have either played a 12 game season or play other conference games in their place to get a full 16 game season.

 

[PanthersPens62]

There is no way any team sport can work properly without a bubble. But even with a bubble, with all of the physical contact involved I can't see how football can succeed with the way things are presently.

 

[Blackhawkswincup]

Could still bubble it up and go with radical plan

Have one city designated for each division for teams to play and put them in there to play only divisional games and keep them there to play all division games

After 6 games have a division playoff Setup (1st place vs 4th , 2nd vs 3rd)

Winners then play for division crown. After that you allow travel to select continued bubble city having next round between division champs and conference championships and then onto SB

Regular season games (6 games)
Intra-Divisional playoff games
Division vs Division playoff round
Conf Champ
SB

Something like this

Phase 1
All NFC North play in say GB for 6 regular season Sundays
NFC North Playoffs happen over 2 weeks in same bubble

Phase 2
Then NFC North Champion goes to play assigned opponent from one of the 3 other divisions (Can come up with record with a bunch of tiebreakers to determine who plays who)

Then winners of that round play Conference Championship
Then SB

8 Original bubble cities for 6 regular season + 2 playoff games
Bye week as teams travel to assigned new bubble cities for Division vs Division round and Championship games

Bye week and SB played in that final bubble site

 

[Shockmaster]

Could still bubble it up and go with radical plan

Have one city designated for each division for teams to play and put them in there to play only divisional games and keep them there to play all division games

After 6 games have a division playoff Setup (1st place vs 4th , 2nd vs 3rd)

Winners then play for division crown. After that you allow travel to select continued bubble city having next round between division champs and conference championships and then onto SB

Regular season games (6 games)
Intra-Divisional playoff games
Division vs Division playoff round
Conf Champ
SB

Something like this

Phase 1
All NFC North play in say GB for 6 regular season Sundays
NFC North Playoffs happen over 2 weeks in same bubble

Phase 2
Then NFC North Champion goes to play assigned opponent from one of the 3 other divisions (Can come up with record with a bunch of tiebreakers to determine who plays who)

Then winners of that round play Conference Championship
Then SB

8 Original bubble cities for 6 regular season + 2 playoff games
Bye week as teams travel to assigned new bubble cities for Division vs Division round and Championship games

Bye week and SB played in that final bubble site

Easier thing to do would be to just have 2 bubbles for each conference and eliminate interconference games for this season.

 

[StreetHawk]

Easier thing to do would be to just have 2 bubbles for each conference and eliminate interconference games for this season.

8 games needs to be played in each conference per week, before byes for 16 total.

Can't play more than 2 games in a stadium. Would the NFL also play on Saturday if NCAA does not play? That would allow 4 games to be played in the NFL stadium.

Or they go 4 hub cities with 8 teams each. Basically you play 14 games (home & away in essence) against the other 7 teams. Put 2 divisions together. Each division within a Conference was scheduled to play another this season, might as well make it a home and home series. Might be the only thing to do. This allows you to use 2 stadiums in each city.

When a non-contact sport like Baseball has a case like the Marlins, it isn't going to be better for the NFL who have twice the roster and way more coaches and staff for a game, plus contact. Benefit is less travel. But still. That's likely the reality the NFL finds itself in now.

 

[Shockmaster]

8 games needs to be played in each conference per week, before byes for 16 total.

Can't play more than 2 games in a stadium. Would the NFL also play on Saturday if NCAA does not play? That would allow 4 games to be played in the NFL stadium.

Or they go 4 hub cities with 8 teams each. Basically you play 14 games (home & away in essence) against the other 7 teams. Put 2 divisions together. Each division within a Conference was scheduled to play another this season, might as well make it a home and home series. Might be the only thing to do. This allows you to use 2 stadiums in each city.

When a non-contact sport like Baseball has a case like the Marlins, it isn't going to be better for the NFL who have twice the roster and way more coaches and staff for a game, plus contact. Benefit is less travel. But still. That's likely the reality the NFL finds itself in now.

Wouldn't rule out 3 games being played if they spaced out the start times. But if they limited it to 2 games per day, they could play games Friday through Monday. Would have to schedule games so that the teams that play on Monday don't play 5 days later.

 

[NYSPORTS]

According to Stapleton (Giants) Only 14 padded practices allowed before season.

 

[Troy McClure]

It's not too late to bubble up. It's certainly harder for the NFL because there are so many more players on their roster, but it can be done.

 

[StreetHawk]

Wouldn't rule out 3 games being played if they spaced out the start times. But if they limited it to 2 games per day, they could play games Friday through Monday. Would have to schedule games so that the teams that play on Monday don't play 5 days later.

You have to factor in time to clean locker rooms in between games. That makes it harder to get multiple games in the same stadium.

 

[KIRK]

Will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes of this . . .

 

[Shockmaster]

You have to factor in time to clean locker rooms in between games. That makes it harder to get multiple games in the same stadium.

That depends on how many locker rooms are in a stadium. If it's only 2, then yes. If there are 4, then it's doable.

 

[StreetHawk]

That depends on how many locker rooms are in a stadium. If it's only 2, then yes. If there are 4, then it's doable.

I don’t know the insides of a football stadium. I know that the raiders are sharing their facility with unlv so there would have to be 4 locker rooms.

seattle shares their stadium with the sounders but huge difference in number of players and size of the stalls. Not sure if they have an extra football locker room.

what is the norm for most stadiums?

 

[JeremyTB]

Is there anyway the NFL can do what the NHL is doing and just use two cities and no travel? Put the AFC in one city and the NFC in the other and just have inner conference games. Make it a 15 game schedule and everyone plays everyone once within their own conference. Now I know Hockey is different because they are only doing the playoffs and also Canada is not as bad as U.S is when it comes to covid-19 cases. Now I know the challenges would be finding room for 16 full rosters in a single city and even a bigger challenge to be able to find time to allow all 16 teams to have practice time using only one field.

 

[Elvis P]

• Bolts extend Bosa; 5 years, $135M, sources say
• Sources: Seahawks to wait on Adams extension
• Ravens, Orioles superfan Mo Gaba dies at 14
• Source: Vikes' Cook reports; DT Pierce opts out
• Packers' Funchess opts out, cites family's health
• Kingsbury says preseason will feel like college's
• Hightower, Chung add to list of Patriots' opt-outs

 

[NYSPORTS]

Donte Hightower and Marcus Cannon to opt out this season for Patriots.

Hightower’s wide had a baby and we know Cannon had cancer years ago

 

[StreetHawk]

Is there anyway the NFL can do what the NHL is doing and just use two cities and no travel? Put the AFC in one city and the NFC in the other and just have inner conference games. Make it a 15 game schedule and everyone plays everyone once within their own conference. Now I know Hockey is different because they are only doing the playoffs and also Canada is not as bad as U.S is when it comes to covid-19 cases. Now I know the challenges would be finding room for 16 full rosters in a single city and even a bigger challenge to be able to find time to allow all 16 teams to have practice time using only one field.

They would have to play over multiple days. 8 games per conference. I live on the west coast and on Sunday’s games begin at 10am for me. So the Sunday Night game ends around 8:30 pm. You can at most play 3 games per stadium in a day. That’s assuming the stadiums have multiple sets of locker rooms.

4 hub cities is likely the minimum. They you have 4 games per stadium. Can play over 2 days. Either Sunday and Monday or Saturday and Sunday. But there is an agreement that the nfl doesn’t play while NCAA is on Saturdays.

 

[DangleCity]

There is just way too players, not to mention all the supporting staff to feasibly have a bubble. NFL rosters are constantly changing do to injuries and whatnot so people would have to he shuttled in and out of the bubble on a literally daily basis. The reason its working for the NBA is because its a 12 man roster

 

[NJDevs26]

I am going to go ahead and say its a bad idea to have football during pandemic. But money triumps all and I gotta accept that.

So, shouldn't NFL allow bigger roster for one season to deal with any potential coronavirus cases?

I don’t understand why they don’t at least do what MLB is doing with a 30 or so man roster at an alternate site, are they too cheap to pay for a bubble for a bigger taxi squad?

 

[Troy McClure]

The biggest limitation is the NBA/NHL are doing playoff tournaments that will about two months (a month at most for most players). The NFL would be putting guys in a bubble for five months. That's just not going to happen, which is why the NFL's season is very much at risk. It's also why we shouldn't count on the 20-21 NHL or NBA seasons happening because those leagues aren't going to want to go into half-year bubbles.

 

[Hasbro]

The travel is less an issue here since it’s one game a week.

I think their best shot would be finding a way to isolate the players, staff and their families in some sort of community for the duration., but even then you are talking about creating a town with a few hundred people.

 

[BackToTheBrierePatch]

Will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes of this . . .

he should not have to explain himself either way. But this is the world we are in now.

 

[NJDevs26]

The NFL would need to create some hybrid of the baseball plan with the football and basketball bubbles, i.e. go down to a ten-game season and have eight bubbles of teams where you can play twice against division teams and once against the geographically aligned division in the other conference. You'd have four games a week in each bubble so you'd only really need two fields - play games Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

They would never even conceive of trying that though because WE'RE THE NFL, WE BOW DOWN TO NOTHING! They're not even increasing the taxi squad beyond like ten which is insane. Even baseball with smaller rosters has a whole thirty-man taxi squad although some of that is complicated by still enforcing the 40-man rule.

 

[GKJ]

he should not have to explain himself either way. But this is the world we are in now.

More like he needs things explained to him as he’s still missing the mark. The notion that he should feel coerced to do it is an inherent misunderstanding of what this is.

 

[GKJ]

The NFL would need to create some hybrid of the baseball plan with the football and basketball bubbles, i.e. go down to a ten-game season and have eight bubbles of teams where you can play twice against division teams and once against the geographically aligned division in the other conference. You'd have four games a week in each bubble so you'd only really need two fields - play games Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

They would never even conceive of trying that though because WE'RE THE NFL, WE BOW DOWN TO NOTHING! They're not even increasing the taxi squad beyond like ten which is insane. Even baseball with smaller rosters has a whole thirty-man taxi squad although some of that is complicated by still enforcing the 40-man rule.

the NFL can’t do a bubble. It’s too many people and resources. Unless they went out to the middle of South Dakota and built an enormous facility. They’d have to build themselves their own small town.

 

[Canes]

The NFL could do a bubble but there would have to be at least 4 bubble locations and they would probably have to delay the start of the season to figure out the logistics and come up with a compatible scheduling format. But I think they would rather take their chances at players contracting Covid and operating mostly as usual than come up with a safer option that would cost them revenue. The players probably wouldn't go for it either.