Your solution makes some sense, which is why it will never work!
Now, about your visual of the Cincinnati stands, would YOU want to go to a game between two teams that have won 8 games between them going into week 15? In rainy weather, no less?
Contrast that with the Patriots-Steelers or the Chargers-Chiefs, or even the Packers-Bears this weekend, all played in equally lousy weather cities. I don’t think the NFL gives attendance figures anymore (too embarrassing), but I somehow don’t think there were too many empty seats for these games. In addition to decent teams on the field, each game had playoff implications, albeit surprising on the Chargers and Bears sides. About all that Cincinnati and Oakland were fighting for was a higher draft pick.
I guess what I’m saying is that no matter how you schedule it, you’ll still have a few clunkers where a lot of fans come dressed up as empty seats. Even if you only have intra-divisional games at the end of the season, you still get stinkers (Jets-Bills, Redskins-Giants, Raiders-Broncos would be good 2018 examples). Especially since, except for the Raiders, all of these teams play in cities where you can get terrible weather in December, which would depress the turnout even more. And even Oakland can get miserable rainy foggy days this time of year.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him change his spots................
Not sure about yesterday’s attendance in Pittsburgh, but the first 6 home games had an average of 5,000 empty seats each (attendance average of 63,300 versus a capacity of 68,300); 92.7% capacity.
92.7% sounds pretty good until you realize that there was a “25 year waiting list” for tickets just 10 years ago, and season tickets generally pass from generation to generation via Last Will and Testament around these parts.
Wait a year or so until Big Ben retires and this is a 7 and 9 to 9 and 7 team and the attendance percentage will crash into the 80’s or even 70’s.
The ‘Badwill’ towards the NFL (although not the Steelers in particular) around here is pretty heavy. Although most here in the “Trump Country” that surrounds the city itself have compartmentalized their love of the Steelers and the 40+ year Sunday ‘tradition’ of Steelers football; separately away from their hate towards the NFL, interest has slid noticeably, way out of proportion to the team’s lower performance on the field from a 13ish win team to a 9ish win team.