Should The NFL Add Another Bye Week?

The National Football League may have officially returned on Thursday when the Broncos pounded the defending champion Ravens, but for the majority of fans, today, the first Sunday, was the big day as damn near every team laced ‘em up and went to war. The specifics won’t be in for a few days, but it’s already easy to predict what they’ll say. Sold out stadiums, huge television ratings and gigantic media coverage. From pretty much any angle you want to measure it, football is king, but if its critics are to be believed, there’s one change the NFL has to make.

Right now, every NFL team gets one bye during the season, which allows the players to rest their bodies and recharge. Consequently, the sixteen game regular season is actually seventeen weeks long. Because of advancements in medicine and science and our understanding of how the body works, it is an undeniable fact that less players would get injured if the NFL would insert one more bye week into the season. It’s impossible to forecast exactly how many long-term concussion problems or short-term broken legs or sprained ribs or dislocated elbows the extra week would prevent, but it is a medical fact that the time would certainly help.

Despite calls for the second bye week, however, NFL executives have shown no interest in making any changes. They like the season the way it is, and if they do add another week, they would like to make teams play one more time, thus increasing revenues across the board.

It’s easy to see why they wouldn’t want to tinker with a system that works so well. Fans are definitely less interested when their favorite teams aren’t playing during a particular week, but if it would prevent injuries and only lengthen things by one week, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

What do you think? Should the NFL add another bye week? Let us know your thoughts by voting in the poll below…

This poll is no longer available.

For more questions of the day, head here