Still seeking input from various sources, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue will not make a decision on a plan for the balance of the season until next week, with a design likely to be finalized on Tuesday afternoon.

In making the announcement Thursday that the NFL would not play its Week 2 games in the aftermath of Tuesday's terrorist attacks on the United States, Tagliabue had said he might have a decision as early as Friday. But the multi-faceted issue made such a deadline unrealistic.

In addition to team owners, Tagliabue is seeking advice from NFL Players Association executive director Gene Upshaw and network executives, among others.

Player representatives for several teams told ESPN.com that the sentiment among the rank-and-file favors playing a 16-game schedule and reducing the number of wild-card teams from three per conference to one. The games postponed this weekend would then be made up on Jan. 5-6, which had been scheduled for the first round of playoff games.

"That seems to be the consensus," said Cincinnati Bengals cornerback Tom Carter. "In our discussions about what the options might be if this week's games were canceled, it seemed to be the plan that had the most support. It might not be fair to a team that would have been in the playoffs otherwise. At the same time, not playing a 16-game schedule isn't the most (equitable) thing, either."

League and team officials, speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said Saturday the NFL seemed to be leaning toward the 16-game plan for two reasons: continuity, and so players are paid for an entire season.

Realistically, the only other option is to simply cancel this weekend's games and play a 15-game schedule. But under that scenario, there are myriad inequities, with the San Diego Chargers, who were set for their bye week this Sunday, winding up playing 16 games and some teams playing only seven division games while others would have the full complement of eight.

Tagliabue said Thursday that moving back the date of Super Bowl XXXVI is not an alternative, and there is no "dark week" this year between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl.

Not since 1981 has the league featured a Super Bowl tournament with just eight teams, but that now appears to be the most viable scenario.

Still, the plan to eliminate four wild-card teams -- leaving just six division champions and two wild cards as the playoff pool -- isn't popular, either, with some owners. "I oppose it pretty strenuously," said Philadelphia owner Jeffrey Lurie, "and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way."

It will be interesting as well to gauge the sentiments of the television networks toward a plan with no wild-card weekend. Cutting back the playoffs would probably mean that the networks would ask the league for a rebate on their rights fees, or at least a reshuffling of the money in subsequent years.

The feeling is that players favor such a paradigm because it would ensure that salaries are paid for the entire 16-game schedule. Despite reports that players have agreed they will not seek payment for a 16th game if only 15 contests are played, Tagliabue and Upshaw said no determination has been made on that issue.

"Honestly, we haven't even talked about it," Upshaw said Thursday. "Money was the last thing we had on our minds this week."

If the eight-team playoff pool were enacted, it would ostensibly take the league right from the regular season and into the conference semifinal bracket.

The league briefly examined the idea of having teams try to make up the canceled games during their bye week, but quickly abandoned the plan because of its inherent problems.

So what is likely is this: The three conference champions will be seeded by record and then one playoff team will be seeded fourth. The wild-card team will play the top-seeded club with seeds Nos. 2 and 3 meeting in the opening weekend of the playoffs, Jan. 12-13. The winners then would play for the conference titles on Jan. 20.

The league had just one wild-card entry per conference 1970-77. The pool grew to two wild-card teams in 1978 and to its current three wild cards in 1990.

Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.