Johnny O is 100% right. Scheduling division games for the end of the season won’t do anything to keep teams from resting. The whole issue is retarded.
It’s a fine idea, one that may well increase late-season drama.
There’s one problem.
It won’t solve the issue Goodell wants solved.
If anything has been lost in the hallelujah choruses patting Goodell on the back for this idea, that has been it – that while the idea of preventing teams who have clinched home-field advantage from supposedly scarring the integrity of the game is perhaps a noble one, simply making teams play late-season games against teams from its division games won’t solve the issue.
Yes, the Colts played starters in Game 14 this past season at Jacksonville four days after clinching home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. But while it being an AFC South game perhaps was a small reason the Colts went all-out with all healthy players in that game, a bigger reason was that with more than a month remaining before the first post-season game, the Colts felt it was simply too early to rest starters.
It’s not hard, in fact, to find an example of how the Colts would approach a situation in which they had clinched their playoff seeding and faced a division opponent late in the season. They faced, in fact, that exact scenario not only in 2008, but in 2007, playing the Tennessee Titans at Lucas Oil Stadium in the season finale each season.
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