Agreed on the regular season schedule. It certainly was a thing of beauty in how balanced it was. Now, not nearly so much!

If it works, don't fix it.

I have advocated for a while now that if the NFL insists on growing the international games there is an efficient way to do it and it could work well with this stupid expanded schedule:

Teams play a normal game on Sunday
The next week if their bye
International game on Thursday night
Next game for the teams is the following Sunday

This provides a week and a half between games making the Thursday night games "safer" for the players and also allow time for the travel, etc out of the country.

In the current scenario, make these the "17th" game on the schedule against whatever team you would not have played in the previous schedule. This balances the new schedule as well as possible and allows the NFL to continue to pursue games outside of the US.

There will be 8 teams in the playoffs soon enough. This is a stepping stone to that outcome.

Boomers getting angry things are changing.All good things must come to an end.

:spock: I'm 38, and this whole thing is dumb.

Hate it. Hate everything about it.

.. but it will bring more football so I'm sure my bitching will be short-lived.