This awful 18-game schedule idea would cause rosters to expand around 40%

In what is a transparent effort by the league to screw over the players in negotiations, they came up with a terrible idea of an 18-game schedule, which, in addition to cheapening their product, would require them to increase rosters size about 40%.

Pro Football Talk came out with a report suggesting the league has been quietly building towards a proposal where the schedule would expand to 18 games, but players could only play 16 games per season.

This specter is being brought up as an idea the owners would push, forcing the players association to concede something they care about to kill this idea; one the owners aren't really behind anyway.

Here's the problem: This is an incredibly sweet deal for the players and it's actually terrible for the owners. The idea is that getting two more weeks of games on lucrative television deals will make an extra $2.5 billion in revenue according to the NFLPA's research. Sounds great for the owners, right?

Well, in order for NFL teams to facilitate this idea, rosters will need to be expanded. Significantly. Beyond the simple reality that almost no NFL teams keep enough backup offensive linemen to make a wholesale change from starters to backups, teams don't have backup kickers, punters or long snappers.

The NFL can't seriously expect teams to dump players to facilitate this nonsense, so rosters will need to be expanded to about 90, up from the current 53 and the 10 on the practice squad. That's an extra 27 jobs and the contracts which come with them, which means increasing the salary cap and just paying more money out to the players.

And the NFL already has a shortage of quality linemen as it is, so the idea a team would be stupid enough to put their franchise quarterback behind second string linemen as a way to somehow work around this rule is insane. A team will concede the loss rather than put their quarterback and their season behind a unit of second blockers. And it will be none other than the owners demanding this action, protecting their investment.

Teams and owners will get the phone calls from television executives and fans that they are forced to televise or pay premium prices for a cheapened product. The risk is entirely on them for when this inevitably goes horribly wrong, exposing their greed and putting the public on the players side in future negotiations.

Teams, for the sake of a tactical advantage, might employ this on the short layoff to Thursday night football, opting to use this as the game to put in all of their backups, effectively killing any viability this has as a property and any financial gains this cash grab might generate.

The league already has enough issue trying to sell Thursday night game between non-factor teams, especially when so many quarterbacks get injured under the current system. Taking the few names casual fans might recognize off the field would be the nail in the coffin.

The NFLPA shouldn't pay any attention to this at all, focus on putting their energy into fighting things that actually threaten them, not actively increase their employment opportunities. And if the owners are stupid enough to make this a real issue they want to push, the players should happily accept it.

If anything, this exposes what any talks of an 18-game schedule really is. A scam to screw over the players in negotiations.