49ers TE George Kittle: ‘I’m advocating for two bye [weeks]’

Does one other regular-season recreation imply there also needs to be one other bye added to the NFL schedule? 

If you ask San Francisco 49ers star tight finish George Kittle, it is a no-brainer. 

“There’s an enormous bodily toll,” Kittle said. “And, like, 17 video games is loads. It’s a variety of video games, with one bye, whether or not it is Week 4 or the bye is Week 11. I’m advocating for two byes.

“But the bodily toll, you are feeling it week in and week out.”

Kittle, 28, went on to debate the large quantities of cash NFL gamers spend on upkeep and maintenance of their our bodies, sharing that he personally spends a “couple hundred thousand” {dollars} yearly.

Last season, Kittle was positioned on IR with a calf damage that left him sidelined for a close to month — and he was hardly alone. Injuries to the decrease extremities — together with hamstrings, quads and abductor muscle tissue — went up last season, whereas ACL tears particularly reached a seven-year high of 71 within the league’s inaugural 17-game marketing campaign.

Kittle doubtless is not within the minority in relation to the concept of getting two regular-season byes.

Since the brand new collective bargaining settlement was handed in March 2020 – it allowed for the enlargement of the common season by one recreation together with the enlargement of the playoff discipline by two groups – many NFL stars have publicly voiced their disapproval.

However, historical past has confirmed that two bye weeks in a single season is not solely inconceivable. 

The league gave groups two bye weeks in 1993 so as to “allow for greater scheduling flexibility, ease the player injury factor and reduce team travel burdens.” However, the experiment failed partly due to how the byes had been divided up throughout the league, which solely had 28 groups on the time, and partly due to its impact on tv schedules, per Yahoo. “The double byes are a double catastrophe,” then-Sports Illustrated columnist Peter King wrote in 1993. “With a lot break day between video games, groups fall out of sync.”

Here’s how some within the sports activities world reacted to Kittle’s remarks.