NFLPA Rejects Latest Dumb NFL Proposal for 18-Game Season

On Friday, news broke and ultimately confirmed the long-pondered notion that the NFL was considering shifting to an 18-game season. While that idea might appear innovative from the surface, it included a bizarre dynamic in which players would only be allowed to participate in 16 of those games.

Of course, that "perk" would completely defeat the purpose of adding two more games into an already physically draining (and even destructive) season, and to nobody's surprise, the players' union has come right out and panned the absurd proposal.

“If somebody wants to make an 18-game proposal, we’ll look at it. I haven’t seen anything that makes me think that it would be good for the players,” the NFLPA's DeMaurice Smith said. https://t.co/q7G4xjHB72
— Post Sports (@PostSports) July 13, 2019

In an immediate response, NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith swiftly shot down the bizarre pipe dream. “I don’t see an 18-game schedule, under any circumstance, being in the best interest of our players," said Smith to ESPN on Friday.

DeMaurice Smith: 18-game schedule not in players' best interest https://t.co/H340W3OhSx
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) July 13, 2019

The NFLPA boss even provided an uncanny analogy that was impressively correlated to the predicament.

“If a coal miner is willing to spend more time in the hole, does it likely result in more money? Yeah. Is that a good thing for him as a person? Probably not. That’s the question nobody confronts. It’s easy to say it’s more money. But is it good for us? The answer is no," he continued.

That (somehow) literally puts the entire ordeal perfectly into perspective. Even with the collective bargaining agreement set to expire in 2021, Roger Goodell and Co. couldn't really have expected the players to react any differently, right?