00:0018 games. Joe, you were in the game when we had 14 games and then you went to 16 games,
00:0718 games. Joe Flacco made some comments about it and says, if you care about the health of
00:11the players, Joe, 18 games seems like a little too much. What's next? 20? What's your take on
00:17that, Joe? It doesn't seem like too much, Dan. It is too much. But again, the owners are thinking
00:23revenue. Players have to be thinking, you know, we hear this, we hear this safety, safety, safety
00:28issue. I think for the last two years, there's been over 60 starting quarterbacks in the National
00:34Football League or guys that have started games. Heck, Phillip Rivers at the age of 45 had to come
00:39out of retirement after five years to get on a roster for the Indianapolis Colts who had a chance
00:45maybe to make it to the playoffs. And so that tells you you're out of quarterbacks. If you're going to
00:50go to 18 games, you have to increase the active roster on Sunday. You've got to put more players
00:56players to the availability of the coaches so that you at least have people to be able to play the
01:01game. Or else, you know, if you lose, you know, say three or four guys at the same position, if
01:07you
01:07lose corners, if you lose defensive linemen, if you lose offensive linemen, where are you going to go?
01:12I think 18 games is a lot. And this is part of the way the system is set up today.
01:18If you're a young
01:18quarterback coming into the National Football League, you have no chance to learn how to play the game
01:25at the professional level because you get absolutely no training camp time. There's no preseason games,
01:31Dan. There's three preseason games now. That means they're going to go to two. And so where are you
01:37going to find playing time for a rookie quarterback? You're not going to put him on the field if you
01:42drafted him the first round. You don't want to risk the chance of him getting hurt. How are you going
01:48to evaluate players? I think there's a myriad of issues when it comes to just two preseason games.
01:53I think there's a problem with three. When you go to 18 games, you know, obviously it's a question
01:58of revenue and they they sell the NFL sells to everybody. You know, we've got the NFL on every
02:03streaming service, every network and every place else. Hey, that's their decision. I just think from
02:09a player standpoint, you're going to run out of people. And that's the problem. You at least have
02:14to address the size of the rosters on Sunday. How about this too, Joe, adding another buy maybe too.
02:21Would you add a second buy into that to try to get the players a little bit healthier? Because
02:26again, sometimes a Sunday to Thursday game, I mean, hey, I'm just looking to try to make the
02:32players a little bit more safer because they tell us they want safety, Joe.
02:37They do. And it's a thing they should demand. You know, you add another buy. Now, what are we going
02:42to play into March? I mean, all of a sudden the NFL season is going to continue to go on
02:46and on and on.
02:47And you're going to you've got buys and disruptions. I played, you know, I played when we didn't have
02:52a buy. I played when we just played football, played a lot of football and good. I'm glad that
02:56they want to protect the players now. But are you really protecting the players? If a guy gets hurt
03:02bad enough that he's going to miss more than a week, then what good does the buy do you?
03:06And now you've got you've got what? Who is it? The San Francisco in Seattle, I believe somebody
03:13playing in Australia. That's a long it's got to be a West Coast team. There's talks about wanting
03:20one in Europe. I mean, you see NFL wanting to expand in an international basis. I think that as you
03:25continue to extend the season, you create the susceptibility of players being hurt. And you have
03:31to, like I said to me, you've got to be able to increase roster size. You're paying the guys
03:36anyway. You know, you've got a limited amount of guys that you can dress on Sunday, dress them all
03:42dress whatever you're paying. So at least you have players to be able to do it. And that'll protect
03:47the health, I believe, of the players a little bit. But adding another buy just complicates the
03:53scheduling situation.
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