Promotion
Should New England rest its starters?

Should New England rest its starters?

By Thurman Thomas

Questions or comments for Thurman? Send him a note at Thurman@nflcanada.com

As the NFL enters the final two weeks of the regular season, a question I get asked a lot is “if your team cannot improve its playoff position, should you rest your starters?"

I will say that several times in my career we either had the number 1 seed wrapped up or we couldn’t improve our position with one or two games left in the season.

In all those situations coach Marv Levy played the starters sparingly and we always won at least the first game of the playoffs.

As a player, especially a veteran, you always appreciated time off to rest and lick your wounds, but on the other hand as a pro, if your team was playing you wanted to be out there.

I guess as my career progressed, I appreciated the rest more than I did earlier in my career. There are a lot of factors to consider when trying to decide what a team should do in these situations. Let’s look at New England. They have the number 1 seed secured. Should they rest their starters? Here are my criteria;

1. Is the team in question a veteran team? Certainly New England is. In fact they have one of the oldest rosters in the NFL, so they are less likely to be hurt by the layoff. And more likely to benefit from the rest.

2. What is the recent history of the team in question? New England has won three Super Bowls recently. So their history is overwhelmingly successful. Another factor in favor of rest.

3. What are the teams and the head coach’s personality, in other words would it be out of character for them to rest their starters. In New England’s case, I think everyone would agree that it would be out of character for them to rest. They barely did it in the regular season during blowouts. This one goes against the Pats for resting.

4. Injuries, not just bumps and bruises, every player has those by now. I’m talking about guys so banged up they have trouble practicing during the week if they practice at all. Those guys should be rested. With coach Belichek being vague at best when it comes to discussing his player’s injuries, it’s hard to decide this one.

5. Where is the game played? If it is going to be played in a cold weather location or under bad conditions, then that favors resting the players. I don’t know what the conditions will be for New England’s final two games, we’ll have to wait on this one.

6. The business side, i.e. player incentives and fan reaction. The player incentives first. Many players have incentives written into their respective contracts for bonuses to be paid for games started, tackles, sacks, yards gained, receptions and so forth. In my case, I had incentives for rushing titles and could have won a couple NFL rushing titles if I had played in those games at the end of the season when we had things wrapped up. The Buffalo Bills paid me on those incentives anyway, which I thought was a smart and classy move, they also paid other player’s incentives that would have been easily attained had they played in those games. I would bet that Robert Kraft (NE owner) would pay those incentives without thinking twice. Now, fan reaction. Some fans want to see the starters play the whole game; after all they paid for the ticket expecting to see the starters play. Although this factor is probably a small consideration for most teams.

7. Look at the record for teams playing after their respective bye weeks; I know it’s very favorable (I’m to lazy to look up the exact winning percentage). By my thinking, New England should rest their starters. I haven’t even mentioned their chance at going undefeated. It will be a factor, but if I were coaching them, I would only play my key starters minimally. You can plug in your team into my formula. See what you come up with.

Thurman Thomas

Buffalo Bills legend Thurman Thomas rushed for 1,000 yards in eight consecutive seasons, was selected to five consecutive Pro Bowls, and was named NFL MVP in 1991. Thomas was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007, and is now an NFL ambassador in Canada and will be making community and charitable appearances on behalf of the league north of the border.