The 2014 NFL schedule was announced recently and with it brought many interesting things to the table with Saturday games coming back to the schedule. This leads to how the NFL can continue to tweak things for the 2015 season to make it better for the fans and the players. This is also the possibility for the 2015 season that there will be expanded playoffs which could lead to some very good games during the final few weeks of the year. There are three things for the 2015 schedule that would be very smart for the NFL to consider.
- Make Thanksgiving all about inter-conference match-ups. The 2014 schedule is full of NFC games. Why not have the holiday be the best three games between the conferences? The 2015 schedule could easily give fans Denver-Detroit, New England-Dallas and any number of other games as the third choice. Who wouldn’t want to see Seattle-Pittsburgh or New Orleans-Indianapolis at night as a Super Bowl rematch from the past? It would appear that the viewership numbers would be through the roof for any combination of those three games. If there aren’t going to be a load of Saturday games, why not load up on Thanksgiving games that each has a great storyline to them?
- Have Week 9 be everyone’s bye week. There are a lot of moving pieces with bye weeks and with them being spread out throughout the whole season. What would be so wrong with making one week be set as the week off for each team around the league? It would allow for a level playing field especially when playoff time arrives. How fair is it really that a team who had a bye in Week 4 is playing a team who had their bye in Week 12? It doesn’t seem right at all. Week 9 of the season could be used for the Pro Bowl potentially if the league wants to fill that week off with some football action. It would simply be easier if each team plays eight games and then has a week off before having eight more games to end the year.
- Scrap the Thursday Night Football idea. Everyone knows that the NFL wants to make as much money as possible and that’s why Thursday games came back in play. The problem is that those games show some of the worst the NFL has to offer since players haven’t had the time to recover. The best move for the league would be to have a full Saturday night slate instead of Thursday. However, it can’t be done because of anti-trust laws so some other idea would need to be floated. The Thursday games in general must leave though but never will because of the money involved. There should be at least two Saturday games however in Weeks 16 and 17 to finish the season.
These are just three ideas that could make the 2015 schedule a bit better than what we are going to see in 2014 with odd three-game home stands or the Thursday night mess.