Inside The Bills

If and when an agreement is struck between the league’s Management Council and the NFLPA on an expanded 18-game season, larger rosters and new rules for injured reserve are going to be big factors in the discussion.

In an interview with NFL Network’s Rich Eisen, Packers President and CEO Mark Murphy, a member of the NFL Management Council, said roster size and relaxed rules for I-R would have to be explored and considered.

“We’ve talked to the union about it, that we’re willing to look at the whole offseason, what we do with the players, what we ask of them and also looking at things such as the number of players on the practice squad and players on the active roster,” Murphy told Eisen. ”We would also look at the injured-reserve rules. It used to be that a player could go on IR, then come back after a set period of time; I think it was six weeks. So maybe reinstituting a rule such as that would give teams a little more flexibility because they’re going to need that. We want to work with the players to identify what things we can do to make the game as safe as possible.”

With two more regular season games the probability of losing players to injury is greater so having more players at a team’s disposal will almost be essential. The I-R rules changes make sense too because if a player is lost in Week 4 for 8 weeks I-R might be considered with only four games left in a current season, but if there are six games left instead a team will want I-R as an option for their active roster, with the possibility of still getting that player back for the last month and a half of the season. Roster flexibility will have to be an almost absolute must with a longer season.