Will all the talk about the NFL wanting to expand to 18 game season (basically said they are going to do it, when they can get the TV revenue for extra games) and players (rightfully) complaining about playing on Thursdays after playing on Sunday...
I have not figured out why they haven't simply added another bye week for every team. Think about it, adding a 2nd bye week and making a rule that says every team must have a bye week before their Thursday Night game... so instead of one short week, and one long week, you now have two long weeks, so players get to rest more. And instead of a 17 week schedule (which includes 17 weeks of regular season weeks of TV revenue) the NFL now gets 18 weeks of TV revenue because TV is paying by the weeks not the games.
The only conflict I see with this is players complaining that they have to be in their NFL city an extra week (boo hoo... you get paid millions, you can stand an extra week of rest in your NFL city) but even then... there is a possible solution... get rid of a preseason week (assuming TV/fan revenue for the preseason is less than TV revenue for the regular season... which I could be complete wrong about, which is why I said possible solution).
But why not get extra regular season TV revenue weeks, with equal number of games by giving more bye weeks? In theory it's safer by giving players more rest time... especially if you put it before their Thursday night games. Also make the early or late bye weeks more fair as they would probably spread them out some.
Also it MIGHT free up the schedules a little more... meaning the schedules would be easier to make now that teams sharing stadiums (ie. New Jersey... yes NEW JERSEY!!!! ... they ain't in New York) now that the teams sharing stadiums will have another bye week to make scheduling even easier (though might not always be connected with Thursday).
Just a thought/question/rant.
Just seems like both sides MIGHT be in favor of something like that... of course maybe they're been too busy going after each other to think about ideas that they both might agree on.