Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is the face of the NFL. He\u2019s not the face of the NFL\u2019s push for an inevitable 18th regular-season game.<\/p>\n
In an interview with CNBC Sport, Mahomes addressed the topic of another game that counts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that you\u2019d have to find a way to have more bye weeks, more time spread out,\u201d Mahomes told Alex Sherman of CNBC. \u201cBecause, I mean, you\u2019ve seen the amount of injuries that have kind of piled up there at the end of seasons, and you want to have the best players playing in the biggest games. And so if there were a way to get to 18 games, I\u2019m not \u2014 I\u2019m not a big fan of it. But if there were a way, I think you got to add some bye weeks in there to give more time for guys\u2019 bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow previously has argued that, if there\u2019s another regular-season game, there should be a second bye.<\/p>\n
A second bye makes a ton of sense. Yes, the network hated the two-bye season of 1993, because it diluted the number of week-in and week-out games. But there are six more franchises now than there were then.<\/p>\n
The other problem is scheduling. The league justifies an 18th game in part by pointing to the reality of a Super Bowl on President\u2019s Day Weekend. Adding an extra bye will result in the Super Bowl overshooting President\u2019s Day \u2014 unless the NFL is willing to revert to the days of Week 1 on Labor Day Weekend. (And maybe it should.)<\/p>\n
However it plays out, an 18th game is coming. The only question left is whether the NFL Players Association agrees to it before the 2030 season, or whether the NFL has to lock them out until they inevitably take the best deal on the table before missing game checks in 2031.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is the face of the NFL. He\u2019s not the face of the NFL\u2019s push…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-1735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}