Brad Biggs of the "National Football Post" reported earlier today that Roger Goodell said the NFL has a contingency plan for moving the start of the season back 2 weeks. While Goodell was talking to Browns' season ticket holders, Goodell said that the Super Bowl would be moved back 1 week. The plan would eliminate the de-facto bye week between the conference championships and the Super Bowl. My question to the NFL is, why?
The NFL and the NFLPA have known about this CBA deadlock for about 2 years. They have all summer to work out an agreement. The fact of the matter is that only a shortage of time will facilitate productive negotiations that will result in a new CBA. The only thing this plan does is push that hard deadline back two weeks.
In my humble opinion, there shouldn't be a backup plan. With this plan, the NFL season would start on September 22. So we now have ourselves a new deadline. It's been moved back to September 22, and everything else remains the same.
I'll give just a little credit to the plan. The only way I see it helping the situation is that it gives the courts two extra weeks to finish their business. At the snails pace the courts like to move, I'm not even sure that will be enough time. I don't know of any significant analysts that think the NFL season will be lost, but moves like this don't help my anxiety over the matter.
What happens if we get to September 20 without a new CBA? I can tell you that I, personally, will lose my mind. Part of the fun of the late summer, early fall months is the start of the NFL season. Moves like this don't exactly inspire confidence on my part, but perhaps I'm just reading way too much into this. Regardless, the draft is just 2 weeks away, and that's what I'm looking forward to right now.