NFL roster changes in the works through competition committee?
By Robby Sabo
Since the NFL began play all the way back in 1920, the evolution of roster sizes has increased as the years have gone on. Will it happen again very shortly?
The NFL these days can be very tricky.
On one end Roger Goodell and the rest of his henchmen want to increase the regular season from 16 to 18 games. As a fan, I’m all for it. It will allow us to shift the season back a tad and have the Super Bowl correlate with President’s Day weekend, giving a ton of people Monday off as it is.
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Why should business keep suffering through post Super Bowl hangups when we could combine the game with a holiday and make it one neatly fit celebration?
On the other hand, the league has come out in full vigilance against anything injury and for everything safety. Of course, this was largely due to the fact they were faced with a heavy class-action lawsuit against them thanks to retired players.
Regardless, it’s forced the NFL to change the rules in such way that touching the quarterbacks helmet with a hangnail will promote a costly 15-yard penalty and automatic first down.
Thursday Night games also get in the way of their own safety fight.
We also reviewed the @NFL roster system – an auxiliary list, expansion of the game roster, and how we handle Thursday night rosters
— Troy Vincent, Sr. (@TroyVincentSr) February 28, 2015
So, you’d think they’d get rid of the Thursday Night schedule, right? Of course not, they’ll find ways around the money-maker and play around with roster sizes instead.
They’ll allow the NFL Players Association to feel a little important and increase jobs among the union.
The give and take between the two sides is a never-ending battle which always revolves around green.
News coming out of the annual NFL competition committee gathering is suggestion that roster sizes could increase from 53 to 55. Not only that, but coaches would be allowed to dress all players for Thursday Night games.
For those unfamiliar with the inner-workings of the NFL roster, 46 players comprises an active roster during each game. This means coaches must select seven players to keep inactive. The number used to be 45 with an emergency third-string quarterback listed as the 46th guy.
Prior to that, the number has always been in the 40’s as far back as 1963 which saw 37 as the active roster number.
Via Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk:
"“Per a league source, the possible solution is the removal of the inactive list for Thursday Night Football. If that happens, teams would dress all 53 players on Thursday night games, with no players on the inactive list. It doesn’t mean that all 53 players would dress for every team in each Thursday night game; players too injured to play but not so injured to be on injured reserve won’t dress.”"
Whether or not this is a good idea or not doesn’t really matter. It’s the only way the league can get around the fact that so many hypocrisies exist between what the league preaches and what they want to accomplish.
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