Seventeen Games is at Least One Too Many - FPSHUB

CLEVELAND, OHIO (TheOBR.com) – Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans!

THE DAILY BLOVIATION

The Baltimore Ratbirds, of all teams, may have helped out the Browns in the long-term picture by defeating the Green Bay Packers last night. The victory means the Pittsburgh Steelers are at least one win or tie away from winning the AFC North and should be entirely focused on beating the Browns this afternoon at Huntington Bank Field.

This helps the Browns because it’s likely they’ll lose and retain a high draft position, which is probably best for the team’s long-term prospects. Yes, I’m one of those guys, who hope the Browns “look good but lose” in their final two games of the season. I want a high-value draft pick.

If the Rats had lost last night, then there would be no unsettled playoff spots in the AFC. None, with a week to play. This leads to many teams resting their starters while some of their opponents are still desperate to lose to preserve their draft position.

It’s absurd.

The entire situation is driven by the league’s desire to continually expand the number of regular-season games it plays, currently at 17 and inevitably heading to 18. One effect of the longer season is that it gives teams more time to separate as the season goes on, meaning that you often get a situation where the best teams can coast down the stretch and the worst teams, like the Browns, are playing a longer series of nearly-pointless games, having long ago been dismissed from the playoff race.

Compounding that is the nature of the NFL game, where injuries are frequent and often long-lasting. The more relevant games down the stretch, the greater the chance that key injuries will occur, which take critical players out of the playoffs before they start. Some studies claim this isn’t the case, but I suspect that the number of teams that hold out players for meaningless games at the end of the season plays a role. And when an important game appears, such as the Ravens’z historic contest last night, it’s hidden on some obscure nouveau platform asking for your money.

What I’m saying is that the season is getting too damn long.

The NFL, as a monopolistic enterprise driven to maximize revenue from its players and fans, wants a longer regular season because it’s simply more money for its voluminous coffers. But, I suspect the dangerous nature of the NFL game and the way many well-constructed teams rise to the top creates diminishing returns as weeks are added, unless you’re singularly fascinated by whether an 8-8 can make it to the off-season by going 9-8, only to be quickly dismissed in a Tomlin-esque fashion.

One impact that’s not really measured by these studies is the cumulative effect of head/concussion injuries taking players out of games, as the NFL has become more sensitive to this injury issue in recent years, raising the probability that players will be taken out as seasons wear on.

I’m old enough to remember 14-game seasons with six pre-season games, a situation that was tilted the wrong way as well. Somewhere in the middle between where the NFL was and the NFL is going is, I feel, the correct answer to season length. Perhaps pulling back to 16 games with two or three pre-season contests is right.

Perhaps it’s just the last two years of late-season apathy on the part of Browns fans that makes me feel this way. For two years, we’ve just been trudging through the end of the season. At least in 2025, we get to see if Myles breaks the sack record or if Shedeur Sanders improves. And, of course, the extra weeks allow vultures still more time to swirl around head coach Kevin Stefanski. Still, many of us are waiting anxiously for the season to be over so we can start rebuilding this off-season for the 2026 campaign.

When your team is awful, the season can’t end soon enough. But there are other reasons the NFL should take a hard look at the length of the regular season and its effects. But they won’t, because they’re the NFL and money drives everything.

Have a good one! GO BROWNS!

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When not waiting for the 2025 season to be over, Barry McBride is the Publisher and Founder of the OBR and bloviates this nonsense every morning. You can follow him on Twitter @barrymcbride or write him at barry@theobr.com if you are so compelled.

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