Home Steelers Offseason Three Thoughts on Three Big Pieces of the CBA

Three Thoughts on Three Big Pieces of the CBA

by Steeldad
NFL

I have to admit, I knew the NFL Players’ Association vote on the new Collective Bargaining Agreement would be close but a difference of just 60 votes was surprising. With just a simple majority needed, the NFLPA passed the CBA giving the League and its’ players 10 more years of labor peace. While this is mostly good for us as fans, there are changes that not everyone is thrilled about. Let me lay out exactly what we can expect.

Padded Practices

The players won a significant victory by getting their time in pads reduced by half during Training Camp. While the loss of that contact will likely be made up by a 17th game (more on this below) the fact that players won’t have to pad up and butt heads as often on those hot, summer days is a huge deal for them.

My concern here is how this will affect the overall level of play. We have seen in recent years that tackling has gotten largely worse and offensive line play has slumped dramatically in the opinion of many, not just me. It’s really quite simple; football is a game where repetition is vital. When we lose the opportunities for repetition we lose the ability to get better and to perfect fundamentals and skills. I don’t care what anyone says, you can do all the walk-thrus in tees and shirts you want to but it isn’t the same as what you can do in pads.

Postseason Plus One

The new playoff format will kick in this season. One new team will be added in each conference and only one team will receive a precious bye week now as well. This means that 14 of the NFL’s 32 teams will make the postseason. The good news here is that this still isn’t half of the teams.

In the National Hockey League there are 31 teams but 16 of them make the playoffs. In the National Basketball Association there 30 teams and 16 make the postseason. That means in those two leagues more than half of the teams qualify and quite often some don’t even finish above .500.

I’m of the opinion that’s wrong and it’s what I’m concerned about in the NFL. If you can’t win at least half of your games you shouldn’t be making the playoffs. I’m not crazy about the additional teams in the NFL Playoffs but at least it hasn’t reached the level of the NHL and NBA.

The one bye will be very interesting as well. This means on “Wild-Card Weekend” there will be three games per conference. Seed two vs seed seven, seed three vs seed six and seed four vs seed five. The lowest remaining seed would play at the team with the bye will winners of the two other games would play each other.

17 Games

The addition of a 17th regular season game also means the reduction of preseason games from four to three. This will not kick in until 2021. While I don’t have any knowledge of this yet, I’m going to assume that there will be a rotational system in place as to who plays nine home games and who only plays eight.

It makes the most sense to me that divisional teams all play the same amount of home games. So for instance, in 2021 the AFC North and AFC South play nine home games as do the NFC North and NFC South. The following year they drop back to eight while the other divisions (who played just eight in ’21) would get the ninth home game.

There is also talk about a ‘neutral site’ game but I see a lot of issues with that and I don’t see owners adding a 17th game only to see that gate money go elsewhere.

The most important thing here for all of us is that we will continue to have football with no work stoppages. Clearly there were many players not thrilled with the CBA but it’s been passed and there’s no looking back.

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