It’s too violent of a game to play a 17 game season. And now that 7 teams make the playoffs, there’s a lot of games that mean nothing in the first half of the schedule so there’s no reason to play in these early season games if your banged up. Add in the Thursday night, Monday night, and international games and it’s a watered down disjointed schedule and feels like an inferior product compared to even 10 years ago.