At a time when most believe an 18-game regular season is a matter of “when” not “if,” Commissioner Roger Goodell continues to frame expansion of the schedule as a matter of “if.”
Goodell addressed the possibility of an 18-game season during a Friday appearance on The Pat McAfee Show.
“One, safety has to be the primary concern, right?” Goodell said. “If you can’t do it safely for our players, we’re not gonna do it. And that’s why I would say it’s not inevitable. Two is I think this is the same issue when we went from 16 [regular-season games] and four [preseason games] to 17 and 3, we did it successfully because we did it with the players. We had taken out a lot of initiatives to make our game safer, and I think we did.”
Still, he later used “when” and not “if” when discussing growth of the season.
“I think when you get to that point, double byes will be a question, roster size will be a question,” Goodell said. “All of those things are gonna be really important to consider, to balance, both with the players’ association and with the Competition Committee, so that we can do it really successfully.”
As to roster size, Goodell later suggested that there would be two or three additional spots on the active game day roster.
The argument for growing the regular season continues to be shrinking the preseason.
“But, listen, I’ve been critical of our preseason,” Goodell said. “I don’t think it’s the kind of standard that we should be putting out there. I think season structure — that includes the offseason, that includes everything up to training camp, and the season, the postseason — we should be looking at that all the time. Evaluating what’s good, what’s bad. What could we make better? And I think there’s still improvements in doing that, obviously, reducing [the] preseason would be the top of my list.”
But the preseason isn’t supposed to live up to any standard. It’s glorified practice, a dress rehearsal. There’s no competitive element to it. It’s a fiction of what football truly is, once the season starts.
Ultimately, it’s about business. (As it always is.) By taking the preseason games and making them into regular-season games, the NFL could earn much more money.
The addition of a 17th game increased the inventory from 256 games that count to 272. Adding an 18th game would push it to 288. Getting rid of the preseason entirely and making those games into regular-season games would add 32 more — pushing the season to 320 games that could be sold to networks and streamers.
A second bye would add two more weekends of windows, with two on Sunday afternoon, one on Sunday night, one on Monday night, and one on Thursday night. That’s 10 more total windows, simply by adding one game and one bye.
So, yes, a push for 18 is inevitable. And the NFL is still keeping open the possibility of doing it as soon as 2027. Until the NFL locks in Super Bowl LXII for February 13, 2028, the door will remain open for 18 games not “inevitably” but soon.
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