NFL owners have raised the prospect of adding a single game to the regular season that must be played at a neutral site, Packers President & CEO Mark Murphy said Friday. That idea has been floated as one of several suggestions to restructure the NFL’s season during the early phases of CBA talks with the NFLPA. The 17th regular-season game would replace one current preseason game, and the resulting neutral-site revenue would be shared among the clubs evenly, a league source said. The change could expand both the NFL’s international schedule and open the door to domestic neutral-site matchups, such Bengals-Browns at Ohio Stadium or Steelers-Eagles at Beaver Stadium.
“That could be something that would really help everybody in terms of growing the game, and growing interest in the game, not only in NFL cities, but internationally and beyond,” said Murphy, a member of the league’s management council executive committee. A union source said the players have not seen any formal proposal regarding the season structure. The conversations so far have been brief and not detailed, sources said.
After being rebuffed by the union in their attempt to add two games to the regular season in the last round of union talks, NFL owners are mooting a variety of options this time -- including simply removing one preseason game, replacing two preseason games with regular-season games or to expand the playoffs by adding a third wildcard team in each conference. Murphy threw cold water on the suggestion that the regular season expand to 18 games but each individual player only be permitted to play in 16. “Quite honestly to me, that’s a hard one to sell to fans,” Murphy said.
