neugey

The 53-man roster is for sure now far, far too small. Injuries are too frequent and players today are too specialized. You now have blocking tight ends and receiving tight-ends. You have receivers that can only play in the slot. Corners who specialize in man to man but can't do much else. In the 70's and 80's it was more 'one size fits all', but today for every position there are two or three implied sub-positions. The players are bigger and faster and more players get hurt. The NFL is worried about concussions and taking concussed players off the field more often for evaluation (and rightly so), yet you can only have 46 players active. A NFL player shouldn't be cut and readded to the team 8 times a season just because of active roster gymnastics. Careers are getting shorter (due to injury and salary cap concerns) and thus the average NFL player is quite a bit younger. More players seeing time on the field are unproven commodities for the purposes of NFL-calibre play. What this means is you have a playing environment that is a little more similar to college football - there is more volatility, more depth chart changes. And yet if you told any NCAA Div 1 coach that they had to cut their active roster to 46 players before they coached their next game, they'd be spitting fire.

The active/inactive roster sizes need to be pushed up from 46/53 to 53/60. More liberal activation and demotion to practice squad should be allowed. And then there's an even more sensible improvement - clone MLB and allow expanded rosters in the last month of the season, or at least the last 2-3 weeks. Make it so the players don't use up their season of FA eligibility for their callup to the expanded roster. The NFL powerhouses get a shot in the arm toward the end of a long, physical season. The cellar-dwellars get to try out marginal players and mine for diamonds in the rough. Not every player will like this idea (and neither would the NFLPA in some regards) but it tremendously helps the game.

If the NFL could get it together, maybe we would see SJB gets some snaps. Because I'm sure most of the reason he was held back was for FA-eligibility reasons. The Saints have been DREADFUL at developing talent for at least the last two years. We continue progressing this way and this team will be a horrible 4-win mess for numerous years to come. But I can't throw Payton under the bus, perhaps just a limb or two, because a lot of it is an NFL problem because of what I've said above.