Despite Joe Burrow’s Endorsement, Brock Purdy Unimpressed With NFL Extension Amidst 18-Game Season Rumour

The motion for 18 games in one regular season has been in the air for some time now. A couple of weeks ago, Roger Goodell went on to The Pat McAfee Show and delved deeper into the idea and why there needs to be a reduction in the pre-season schedule. Consequently, a lot of players and fans had a mixed reaction to the proposal. Two of those athletes included the Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow and the 49ers’ QB Brock Purdy.

Burrow took to X a couple of weeks ago and posted, “18 games? 2 bye weeks,” but didn’t elaborate much concerning the same. However, after some time, he expanded on how he wanted things to take shape if the NFL made it an 18-game schedule. Brock Purdy’s assessment appeared along the same lines; however, the professional seemed undecided and unimpressed on how things would eventually unfold.

Brock Purdy doesn’t feel ‘100%’ about an 18-game season

Purdy recently did a presser where a reporter wanted to know the 49ers QBs thoughts on 18-game seasons. For Purdy, playing 18 games would be painstaking, unless there’s some sort of a bye week involved. Though he didn’t really have a solution to the puzzle, he tried to justify his thought process.

“I mean, if that is the case, I think two byes would be nice. That kind of thing It’s a long season, man. You go through so much physically and mentally, everything. But if we’re gonna extend it another game, I think another bye would be pretty nice. But at the same time, it’s longer,” said the Bengals QB.

“So, I don’t know how everyone around the league feels about it. But I know that we’re going through it every single week, weekend, and week out to get back for the next game. So, I don’t know, there are pros and cons to it. I don’t really know how I feel 100% on it yet.” As mentioned earlier, Purdy is still in two minds about the proposition, whereas Joe Burrow had suggestions on how he wanted the proposal to go.

Burrow’s take expands on what Brock Purdy thinks

Having an additional game to the season means there’s more chance of injury and fatigue for an athlete. It would also mean that the teams would have to double-check their roster to compensate for an additional game. Hence, to counter this, Burrow positioned an NBA All-Star game approach with two bye weeks. He elaborated on his X post recently as per Burrow, having 2 byes are of utmost importance.

“Those two byes are pretty critical. Maybe you could do something like the first bye is kind of how we have it now and the second bye everybody has it once and you make it like the Pro Bowl week or something like the All-Star week for the NBA, I don’t know. People that paid a lot of money to have those discussions and make those decisions, but we’ll see how it plays out,” said the Bengals QB.

On McAfee Show, Goodell mentioned how he doesn’t like the idea of having pre-season games, and per him, the players aren’t fond of it either. The process of making this change is well under way and the CBA passed the proposal with 51.5% in favor. However, this schedule got a public pushback from players like Aaron Rodgers. But one thing is for sure, if any such change were to happen, it would have to be collectively bargained with NFLPA.