Unrivaled: 2020 NFL Season Should Have AFC/NFC Weeks

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Normally at this time of year the NFL would be weeks into training camp and the first week of preseason games would be upon us. However, we are living in uncertain times with COVID-19 taking over the sports calendar.

NFL teams are acclimating players into training camp and there is no preseason this year as a precaution. Football fans are hoping the NFL can go forward because it might be the only football we get this fall because at the college level multiple leagues have opted out for the fall season due to the uncertainty of COVID-19.

Making the NFL work this fall might require drastic scheduling changes and adjustments. To be prepared for the season a backup calendar needs to be organized as a secondary plan, according to KSL Unrivaled.

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There is a Sports Illustrated article that was recently published about tweaking the NFL season and at least having a backup plan just in case things go sideways.

Perhaps one that features fewer games, alternating conferences playing, and using the option that the Super Bowl has to push the game back a few weeks while creating a bubble for the biggest U.S. sporting event of the year. They also consider having teams fly on the day of the game for an evening contest and even playing games on different nights of the week.

With Major League Baseball having so many issues, it would be best for the NFL to have an alternate plan in place to be able to complete a full season.

Unrivaled Makes Its Own NFL Plan

The NFL has really been sticking with its regular season play and the only real adjustments are the preseason games being canceled. Training camps have also been adjusted and eased.

KSL Sports’ Scott Mitchell – former NFL quarterback – has ideas about this season and his main talking point is that the league needs to be flexible.

“Cutting the schedule to half makes a lot of sense. Does it have to be half of the games to eight? No,” Mitchell said. “Maybe it’s 12, I don’t know, or maybe it’s 12 [games] over 17 weeks and they extend things out. I think everyone’s in agreement that we’ve got to be able to move things around. So is it eight games probably not, but maybe it’s 12 or maybe it’s 10, something like that. So that’s a possibility.”

The main point is that there needs to be some flexibility built in so that if games are canceled they either can be made up or just pushed aside. Some other options to build in safety and flexibility is to assign an AFC week and an NFC week. This also would help not just with COVID-19 related issues but the overall picture of health and players recovering with more off weeks built into the season.

“Well, it’s that flexibility thing. It allows for if you have things flare-up, you’ve got two weeks to actually get healed,” Mitchell said. “Players may end up liking this a lot. I know one of the hardest things physically as a player, you get so beat up and it’s just it’s such a grind. The season, you know, it’s just every week is a tough thing to deal with. So this may this is one of those things no one’s really talked about.

“It makes it easy. You know, the NFC and AFC go every other week that that that would work and be fine. I just think they can get more than eight games in an NFL season.”

Pushing the Super Bowl back and creating a bubble for the two teams participating teams would make it a bigger probability that every team is healthy and the best two teams are playing at full strength.

“That’s not unreasonable to move it back and it’s not unreasonable to have them there for two weeks have a mini-bubble there for those two weeks. That’s not a problem. Most teams today, they know, we’re here about taking care of business,” Mitchell said. “So most of these players are going to have the discipline to stay in the bubble. There’s not going to be that issue. The question is, as fans and by then, can they have fans?. I think it’s actually better to move it back anyways. The most depressing day of the year for me is the day after Super Bowl because it is over and it’s for everyone.”

Where Is Plan B?

The NFL is currently acting like everything will go on as planned for the upcoming season besides not having fans in the stands. Perhaps it is something that this being talked behind closed doors but it seems that the league is going to just push through and go forward with the 16-game regular season as planned.

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“The thing that really grabs me about all this is I don’t hear the NFL talking about what’s plan B and, you know, maybe they’re gun shy because they already tried plan B and free agency and it didn’t work out,” Mitchell said. “So they don’t like having contingency. These don’t these recommendations are you know, they feel OK, I don’t have a problem.”

A multi-billion dollar business better have some sort of backup plan to make as much as money as possible because it would look really bad if the NFL has a situation like Major League Baseball where a few teams can’t play for a few weeks, according to Unrivaled. Making up an NFL game is far different than going with double-headers of seven innings each for the MLB.

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