As a Chiefs fan, I'm very interested in seeing Mahomes play tonight and throughout the preseason. I would have preferred they draft Watson instead, but have been hearing impressive reports about Mahomes' abilities.

So if you somehow haven't heard by now, Ezekiel Elliott has been suspended for the first six games of the season. I'd feel worse for the Cowboys, but, y'know...

Schadenfreude Intensifies

In reality, Dallas is in serious trouble all of a sudden. The first six games of the season include home games against the Giants and Packers, as well as trips to Arizona and Denver. Their schedule is already brutal, with 5 more games against teams that made the playoffs last year after that.

That both complicates and simplifies predicting the mess that is the NFC. The Cowboys' chances of grabbing a first round bye have taken a serious hit, but now that middle of the pack that could realistically finish anywhere between 3rd-8th in the conference is even more log jammed.

Looked at schedule and man that is quite a bit of preseason games. Surprised we don't hear more injuries during this time, with the constant playing. All 6 teams playing on the last Sunday also play on the last Thursday. Normal MNF is only 2 teams and they usually don't play on TNF after. Guess the extra day counts.

There are actually a decent number of injuries, you just don't hear about them because they're often backups who are fighting for a roster spot. Three different Patriots; Deatrich Wise, Jordan Richards, and Elandon Roberts, all sustained injuries and left the game against Jacksonville. Chances are you've never heard of any of them because they're either rookies or just trying to nail down a spot on the team.

I figure high profile rookies or former famous starters would be talked about though. It seems we rarely hear of top draft picks getting injured, but I suppose that also has to do with their natural athleticism.

Won't find many famous former starters playing much preseason football. It's used mostly to give newer players who are unknown quantities a chance to show what they can do in a game environment. Older players, who have more miles on them and are often more susceptible to injuries, already have plenty of game experience and don't really need the extra practice. For instance, Danny Amendola, who is now the Patriots #5 receiver, probably won't play any preseason football at all. New England knows what he's capable of and wants to keep him from getting injured.

Higher profile players are also less likely to get injured because they usually don't play as much. With that said, there are plenty of notable preseason injuries from the past few years. Tony Romo, Teddy Bridgewater, Jordy Nelson, Kelvin Benjamin, Osi Umenyora, and Michael Vick are all notable names that have suffered a season ending injury in preseason football within the past 15 years.

While we're in the throes of preseason and the NFL is still pretending to listen to player concerns, I thought it'd be as good a time as any to revisit a subject we've debated on past iterations of this thread; NFL playoff qualifying.

A while back, the NFL said that the playoffs were likely to expand from 6 teams in each conference to 7, with the 2 seed simply losing their bye and having to play on wild card weekend. By the end of last year, I think most of the chat had come to the conclusion that this was probably a not so great idea, as the first round of the playoffs was incredibly boring as is and would only have gotten more so if it included a 9-7 or 8-8 team getting pasted by the 2 seed. With that said, there are legitimately times where there's a reasonable case that a team which got left out of the playoffs should've been in. Consider these recent teams:

2014 Philadelphia Eagles (10-6), missed playoffs while the Carolina Panthers (7-8-1) qualified as NFC South Champs

2010 New York Giants (10-6) and Tampa Bay Bucs (10-6), missed playoffs while the Seattle Seahawks (7-9) qualified as NFC West Champs

2008 New England Patriots (11-5), missed playoffs while the San Diego Chargers (8-8) qualified as AFC West Champs

It's not exactly common, but occasionally, a much more deserving wild card team gets absolutely screwed over by NFL division winners automatically making the playoffs and a much worse team makes it over them. With that said, nobody seems to like the idea of taking away the automatic playoff spot and home playoff game from division winner, as, well, winning the division should mean something. So with that in mind, I tried to devise a slightly tweaked NFL schedule and playoff system that kept these things constant:

#1: All division champs host at least one playoff game

#2: The #2 seed still has a first round bye

#3: We don't get playoff games with bad-mediocre teams if they can be avoided

So here's what I came up with:

First, get rid of one preseason game. The NFL has already acknowledged that there are probably too many, and they're not exactly making a ton of revenue off of it, so this isn't a big loss. As a result, the regular season opener (and the rest of the season) gets moved up by a week. Instead of starting on the second week of September, the regular season starts in either late August or very early September. This also means that the regular season ends a week earlier than it did.

Second, put an off week inbetween the end of the regular season and the wild card round of the playoffs. Teams still in the hunt have a chance to rest and recover from injuries. Hopefully this will help level the injury playing field (a bit) when it comes to the playoffs. The one exception to this is in the instance of both a third non division winning team with 10 or more wins, and a division winner with less than 10 wins. If that happens, those teams will go head to head in a play in game played at the division winner's stadium. The winner of the play in game advances to the wild card round.

There are a few potential issues, of course. The biggest problem is that 1 and 2 seeds will always have a full two weeks off inbetween their last regular season game and first playoff game, which, on one hand, is great for healing, but is also conducive to building rust. Two week byes aren't something the NFL has done before, to my knowledge, and it certainly isn't something that's happened recently. Coaches would definitely need to plan carefully to keep the team focused during such a long wait.

Additionally, since this type of matchup would only happen routinely, there's a down week inbetween the end of the regular season and the playoffs. This might potentially affect interest in wild card games, as the casual observer goes from watching the end of the playoff chase to...nothing.

Finally, I don't really have any idea of how to deal with a clusterfuck situation like the NFC had 2010 with a 7-9 division winner and 4 teams that didn't win their division but still posted 10+ win seasons. Can't really help there.

My personal preference for NFL playoffs would be to expand it to 8 teams for each conference (4 division winners, 4 wild card with the division winners still getting the top ranks). So half the teams in the league would make the playoffs which would help keep more fan bases active. I would say nobody gets a playoff bye as it unfairly tops the balance, which is already skewed due to home field advantage. Give all the teams a week to heal at the end of the season and then play straight to the super bowl.

All American sports segregate the conferences. In But in the NFL the conferences are very arbitrary as it's not geographic.