INDIANAPOLIS -- Six NFL teams plan to submit a proposal to the league that will push the NFL trade deadline from Week 8 to Week 10.
The Browns, Commanders, Eagles, Jets, Lions and 49ers are set to propose a later trade deadline that would, in effect, lead to an increase in trades in the NFL and, in reality, heighten drama and intrigue in the league.
It's unclear if the proposal will actually be approved by NFL team owners at next month's annual league meetings in Florida, and a league source said there's disagreement among both owners and general managers themselves about whether the deadline should be moved at all.
"Our professional sports league has the earliest trade deadline by far," Browns GM Andrew Berry tells CBS Sports. "When you look at the other major four sports leagues … I think baseball and basketball, their trade deadline is after about 65% of their games have been played. Hockey's after 78%. We're currently at 45%. Our proposal would move it to about 55% of games played, while also maintaining the integrity of the season.
"If you look at it, on average, over 27 teams have been within two games of a wild-card spot exiting Week 10 games, and the earliest that a team has been eliminated from postseason contention over the last decade has been after Week 11, and that's only happened twice."
One league source told CBS Sports there's some movement toward pushing the deadline back until Week 9, with the thought being that with the addition of the 17th game, giving teams that extra week makes sense.
What the NFL wants to prevent against is tanking. Waiting later in the season to determine whether a team is a buyer or a seller could create teams being encouraged to trade away key players and be less competitive as the months turn colder. For example, a 4-4 team with nine games left in the season would be less likely to deal players than a 4-6 team with just seven games to play.
"We don't want to be baseball," one league source said.
Berry disagreed with the idea that pushing the deadline later would promote tanking.
"I think that really hasn't really borne true in the data," Berry says. "That's part of the reason why we didn't really push it deeper into the season. When we looked at again after Week 10, there are usually at minimum, 27 teams that are within two games of a wild-card spot with seven or eight games to play. So it affords more flexibility for all teams without getting into a position where the NFL is a league of, call it, like haves and have-nots."
NFL team owners will meet in Florida from March 24-27 for their annual meetings where a host of proposals will be presented and potentially voted upon.
