Whoever came up with the phrase “no rest for the weary” obviously didn’t follow the NFL.
The best NFL teams each season fight to earn one of the coveted top two seeds in the playoffs. Not because it earns them a trophy or a banner – although it’s the kind of thing the Indianapolis Colts would definitely deem banner-worthy – but because it gives players a week off and a home game. Then there’s the teams that do so well in the regular season that they have nothing left to play for by late December, earning their top players extra recovery time in Week 17, as well.
Time off. Rest. Being at home. NFL teams clearly find these things to be important. And for good reason. Professional football is a brutal sport that leaves every player bruised, battered and hobbled after playing a full 16-game season. Even the punters. There’s no way around it, save for getting some unscheduled time off.
Yet resting players late in the season doesn’t produce the results most teams hope. Fewer than 25% of Super Bowl champions over the past 22 seasons had a first-round bye in the playoffs. Once the postseason begins, it’s often the teams with momentum and a regular rhythm going that have proven to be the toughest to beat, not those just waking up from a winter’s nap.
We saw a glimmer of this last season even with the No1 seed in the AFC winning the Super Bowl. Carolina raced to a 14-0 mark in the regular season, but then lost two of their final five. The Panthers likely peaked too early and were beaten by a Broncos team that had Peyton Manning playing his best football (which still wasn’t that great) after using the middle of the regular season to get healthy and let his body recover. Maybe Cam Newton would have played better in February if he took some time off in November. We’ll never know.
What we do know is that the bye week(s) v momentum question puts coaches in a tough position. Do they try to avoid a playoff bye to ensure their players keep plugging along no mattered how injured and exhausted they are? Or do they try to let their veterans relax in late December and early January and hope their players can suddenly turn the switch back to ON when a peaking underdog comes to town? It’s almost a lose-lose.
If only there was a way to give players a break, keep them healthy and have them rolling in mid-season form for the playoffs. Perhaps we’ve accidentally hit upon the one area in which Roger Goodell can be useful after all.
Goodell is a disaster in most every area under purview of his job description. That’s not in question. But if there’s anything the NFL commissioner does well, it’s giving wildly arbitrary and often undeserved fines and suspensions. In the last six weeks we’ve seen Tom Brady have his four-game suspension for ball deflation/cell phone etiquette upheld and Le’Veon Bell get three games for missing drug tests for a natural, non-performance-enhancing substance that is legal in a growing number of US states. Two of the NFL’s biggest stars, playing for two of the biggest Super Bowl favorites, given time off by the commissioner to watch from home while their lesser opponents go out and slaughter themselves for the first month of the season. As punishments go, they’re pretty great.
Brady and Bell surely want to play Week 1, but it’s only because they have yet to realize they’ve lucked into what could be the NFL’s new market inefficiency: using suspensions as a way to keep players healthy and in midseason form for the postseason.
No team is doing this yet. But maybe they should. Many pundits have already said that Brady’s suspension will ultimately help the Patriots – yours truly included – so aren’t planned and purposeful suspensions the next logical step? And, no, no one is advocating Greg Hardy-type actions to earn a suspension via Goodell’s Wheel Of Punishments. Victimless, non-violent crimes only, please. Your small amount of marijuana possessions, your repeated uniform violations, your refusal to turn your cell phone over to one of the America’s creepiest corporate executives (a very crowded field, to be sure). The goal of time off can be achieved with the little, stupid stuff that gets NFL players banned. Stuff far from the Aaron Hernandez neighborhood of wrongdoing.
Just last week, under threat of suspension by Goodell, defensive stars James Harrison, Clay Matthews and Julius Peppers caved and agreed to answer the league’s questions about allegations made against them in a 2015 Al-Jazeera report.
What a missed opportunity. Harrison is 38. Peppers is 36. Matthews is 30. All three are at a stage in their career in which their bodies could use a few extra weeks off during the season. And each plays for a team that should be able to handle making the postseason even without them in the lineup for a portion of the schedule – same as with Brady and Bell. Why not skip the interviews, take a four-game suspension, a come back with energy and an edge right when the games really start to matter?
Turning Goodell’s one, true love of suspensions against him would be the ultimate F-you to a commissioner the majority of NFL players despise, Harrison chief among them.
@nflcommish ain't no fun when the rabbit got the gun huh?
— James Harrison (@jharrison9292) September 10, 2014
Goodell has over-punished during his tenure to such a degree that there’s no stigma left to getting suspended. Brady isn’t being dropped by sponsors or booed around Boston. What’s the worst that could happen if players start openly trying to get time off? Goodell gets wind of the strategy and suspends them for it? The man would lose his mind. There’s no bad outcome here.
Coaches want their players to stay healthy and fresh, but they also want them building momentum late in the season. It just might be that getting suspended early in the season is the only way to do both. Come on, NFL teams. Think outside the box. Especially if thinking outside the box is something that can earn a suspension.
