George Kittle Continues Being Hot As Fuck, An Elite Tight End, And The Voice Of Reason By Advocating For A Second Bye Week.
Pro Football Talk - The NFL finally has managed to expand the season from 17 to 18 regular-season weekends, thanks to the addition of a 17th game. 49ers tight end George Kittle would like the league to expand to 19 regular-season weekends without adding games.
Appearing on Cold As Balls with Kevin Hart, Kittle made the case for two regular-season bye weeks.
“There’s a huge physical toll ,” Kittle said, via Taylor Wirth of NBCSportsBayArea.com. “And like, 17 games is a lot. It’s a lot of games, with one bye, whether it’s Week Four or the bye is Week 11. I’m advocating for two byes.”
To deal with that physical toll, Kittle said that he spends a “couple hundred thousand” dollars per year on his body. Fortunately for him, he can afford it; he’s making $15 million per year.
The league experimented with two byes back in 1993. The networks didn’t like it, because it diluted the weekly slate of games. At the time, however, there were only 26 teams. There are now 32. Maybe it would be easier to pull off a second bye week.
It’s more likely at this point that the 19th weekend of the regular season would come from an 18th game, not from a second bye. Regardless, as legalized wagering continues to expand, the NFL will be looking both for more inventory and more stand-alone games. A second bye would indeed give the NFL more ways to have more games in more windows, without increasing the number of total games.
First off, and totally aside, if you don't like Kevin Hart you have a big old dump in your pants.
How this guy continues to find time to pump out more and more stuff is beyond me. He's like the black Ryan Secrest. Except he's funny.
Secondly, George Kittle is the fucking man. That's really not up for debate and I don't think there's anybody in the world, outside of Cowboys fans, who would have a bad thing to say about him.
He's an all-around stud and he's spot on with his logic here.
If you're going to expand the season, even by just one game, give these guys another off week. You could argue they need/deserve one regardless of adding the extra game to the schedule, but now it's only fair.
Their bodies take a fucking pounding, we have football on like 8 nights a week now, and the schedule not only allows it, its actually better for everybody. (More on this in a minute).
For starters, these Thursday night games the league is determined to shove down our throats and make work, can and would work so much better if they paired up two teams coming off bye's each week. There would be no excuse for short weeks, less potential for injuries, and better quality of play. Everybody wins. I'm no math expert but a second bye week makes that easily doable.
More importantly, do you know what adding another bye week, aka another week, to the regular-season schedule does?
It moves the Super Bowl back a week. Which just so happens to be Presidents Day weekend. Meaning most businesses recognize the holiday on Monday and are closed for business. So that would mean we finally would have hangover Monday off.
Obviously, this all makes too much sense for Roger Goodell to take into account and make happen, but one can hope.
p.s. - Kevin Hart also put Kittle on the spot about Pretty Jimmy and Kittle tip toed around it
Full interview here