The National Football Players’ Association has rejected the latest proposal in the collective bargaining agreement according to the Associated Press. On Friday, the NFLPA Union Executive Committee rejected the proposal in a 6-5 vote.
The major reason why the NFLPA does not like the new proposal is because there is an attempt to increase the number of games from 16 to 17. Under the owners’ proposal, rosters are planning to increase as well, and the preseason schedule will decrease.
Dropping the preseason schedule is the best part of the owners’ proposal. There are so many insignificant games played in August and many regulars do not play anyways.
I am not a supporter of increasing the number of playoff games from 11 to 13 and only giving one team from each conference a bye to the divisional playoff. Finding 12 teams in the NFL each season that are playoff worthy is a struggle. Now there will be 14. It should be noted that the NFLPA does not need to support the new proposed playoff format (six wildcard games with 2 vs. 7, 3 vs. 6 and 4 vs. 5) as long as all of the playoff games happen over a four weekend period (not including the two weeks between the conference finals and the Super Bowl).
Another issue where there could be NFLPA contention is having a playoff game on the Monday night. Games on Monday were scrapped from the final weekend of the regular schedule a few years ago because it gave a possible team which played Monday night a serious disadvantage in the first weekend of the postseason. Now the NFL will be trying to play six playoff games at different times, with Monday night a possibility. A team that wins Monday night in wildcard weekend has less time to prepare heading into the divisional playoffs.
