Perhaps in an effort to get more players to support the idea of growing the regular season by more than 10 percent via the addition of two regular-season games, Commissioner Roger Goodell said on Thursday that such an enhancement to the season likely would be accompanied by changes to the offseason program.
“Obviously there’s a lot of pressure from teammates and coaches,”
Goodell said after a high school event in Queens, “so I think we’re going to have to have some guidelines
and restrictions on what can be done and can’t be done in the
offseason.”
That said, the CBA already contains “some guidelines and restrictions” regarding offseason workouts that, until this year, routinely had been ignored by teams -- and unenforced by the union and the league.
Besides, we’re not yet convinced that reducing the amount of work in the offseason will make it safer to play two more full-contact, all-out regular-season games. If anything, the offseason program helps to prepare bodies for the grind of the season, and to give players enough low-impact reps to help them do their jobs properly when the real games begin.
Actually, we believe that “some guidelines and restrictions” will be needed at training camp under a schedule featuring 18 games in the regular season and two in the preseason, since coaches will be forced to determine the 53-man roster and the depth chart with the benefit of half of the current exhibition reps.