Joe Burrow reiterates idea for second bye, floats notion of in-season break for all teams
When Commissioner Roger Goodell officially lit the fuse on an 18-game season, Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow made a pitch on social media for two bye weeks.
On Tuesday, Burrow expanded on his request for more down time, if there will be another week of "go" time for each team.
"Eighteen games is definitely a big ask, that's not easy," Burrow said, via WLWT.com. "Adding that extra game, obviously it'd be great for revenue. But I feel like adding that bye week, if you're going to have an 18 game schedule, is pretty critical for our bodies.
"If you keep that first bye week — some teams have that first bye Week 5, Week 6 — and then you're going 12, 13 games in a row. That's not easy. Probably a Thursday night game thrown in there, too, That's never easy. So, those two byes are pretty critical."
Burrow trotted out another idea for the second bye: Shut down the whole league for a week.
"Maybe you could do something like, the first bye is kind of how we have it now, and the second bye everybody has it at once, and you make it like the Pro Bowl week, like an All-Star break for the NBA," Burrow said. "I don't know, people get paid a lot of money to have those discussions and make those decisions."
One reason those people get paid a lot of money is they know how to make a lot of money. Shutting down the entire league for a week during football season would not do that.
The argument against two byes is that the networks don't like it, because it dilutes the weekly schedules. In 1993, the league had two byes in a 16-game schedule, and the networks hated it.
Of course, there were only 28 teams at the time. And it was before free agency took root. Teams are more balanced now. Also, the schedule wouldn't look as light with 32 teams.
Still, the last thing the league would do is take an entire weekend off. With 18 games and two byes, that's 20 weeks of regular-season football. Which the NFL will embrace with open arms and full coffers — until the NFL tries to push for 19 games and then 20.
