Great... I sure hope it doesn't come to this, but I guess the league has to be prepared. Pro Football Talk outlines some details of the eight game season which would kickoff around late November. This is all predicated on a deal being reached in October. October? Something better get done before October!
February 12th is the latest the league could hold the Super Bowl at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana. So by counting weeks backward, it puts the kickoff to the season at Thanksgiving. The NFL is prepared to allow 5 weeks for teams to prepare for their season including free agency, training camps, and a preseason game, but their worst case scenario is a 3 week prep time which would place the end to the lockout at early November. Yuck.
To ensure each team receives 4 home and 4 away games some schedule tweaking may occur. You'd also think that the NFL would want each team to play all three of their division rivals. Currently the Bears last eight weeks have them with 4 home and 4 away games, and they face all 3 division foes. But the NFL may want to utilize the first 8 weeks as their base for any scheduling fixes, as they planned ahead when creating the schedule.
The schedule is set up so the first four games would allow for some flexibility. Weeks 2 and 4 have no division teams facing each other and the week 3 match-ups feature teams with the same bye week. Hopefully all this speculation is nor naught and the players and owners will get an agreement done.