When NFL commissioner Roger Goodell recently admitted the league may look to expand to an 18-game regular season, Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow was quick to respond, arguing in favor of an additional bye week. Now, the signal-caller has doubled down on his take by offering an even more expansive alternative.
“Maybe you could do something like, the first bye is kind of how we have it now, and the second bye everybody has it at once, and you make it like the Pro Bowl Week, like an All-Star break for the NBA,” Burrow told reporters Tuesday, per WLWT. “I don’t know. People get paid a lot of money to have those discussions and make those decisions. But, we’ll see how it plays out.”
The NBA has hosted its All-Star Game since 1951, and that exhibition, along with additional events, is traditionally scheduled as an entire weekend, with no regular-season games occurring simultaneously. The NFL, of course, has long held its own all-star contest, now dubbed the Pro Bowl Games, after the conclusion of the regular season and postseason, excluding the Super Bowl. It also only allows one bye week per team per season.
“Eighteen games is definitely a big ask,” Burrow explained. “That’s not easy. Adding that extra game, obviously it’d be great for revenue. But I feel like adding that bye week, if you’re going to have an 18-game schedule, is pretty critical for our bodies. … If you keep that first bye week — some teams have that first bye (in) Week 5, Week 6 — and then you’re going 12, 13 games in a row? That’s not easy. Probably a Thursday night game thrown in there, too. That’s never easy. So, those two byes are pretty critical.”
