{"id":350996,"date":"2025-12-17T11:44:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T11:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/350996\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T11:44:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T11:44:07","slug":"recent-injuries-wont-deter-nfls-push-for-18-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/350996\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent injuries won’t deter NFL’s push for 18 games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday\u2019s injuries to two of the NFL\u2019s biggest stars will not deter the league\u2019s quest for one more regular-season game.<\/p>\n

It just won\u2019t. It\u2019s too late for that. As early as 2010, Commissioner Roger Goodell made clear<\/a> the desire to expand to 18 games, by making the very simple argument that there are 20 total games and the four (at the time) preseason games stink<\/a>. Why not move the games that count from 16 to 18 and the ones that don\u2019t from four to two?<\/p>\n

The league surprisingly backed off at the time, unable to reconcile a Congressionally-forced epiphany regarding health and safety with increasing the total annual workload by 12.5 percent. The 2011 CBA gave the league the ability to unilaterally cut the preseason, with the idea (at the time) that the NFLPA would respond to that action by clamoring for more games that count. (The league never exercised its prerogative.)<\/p>\n

So the league waited until 2020 before persuading the NFL Players Association to agree to move from 16 to 17 games. The CBA based on one extra game faced much stiffer resistance than the NFLPA expected.<\/p>\n

Since then, the desire to finish the expansion to 18 has grown. It\u2019s widely regarded as inevitable that the league will push for another game, either through the next round of CBA negotiations or, if necessary, a lockout that will linger until the players say \u201cuncle<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regardless, the league wants 18. It\u2019s determined to get 18. And any concerns about increased injury risk will be met with an array of cherry-picked statistics that will support the case. Starting with the obvious data point that the Patrick Mahomes and Micah Parsons ACL tears happened in their 14th games of the season \u2014 a number of regular-season contest the NFL has been playing since 1961.<\/p>\n

The league\u2019s desire for 18 games will be thwarted only if the NFLPA gives up enough other stuff to satisfy the league\u2019s broader revenue goal, or if the NFLPA can persuade the players to accept a work stoppage that wipes out a full season. The latter likely won\u2019t happen; the former would be a temporary fix, stalling but not erasing the obsession with 18 games.<\/p>\n

The NFL is a football machine. Every player is a part in that machine. Every player\/part will be replaced at some point, either temporarily or permanently. And the machine will keep churning. Swapping out injured players or retired players or players who are simply not as good as the available alternatives and at all times printing more and more and more money.<\/p>\n

More. That\u2019s what the NFL wants. That\u2019s what the NFL gets. Because it always does. As long as the supply of minimally competent players outweighs the demand for roster spots, that will be the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunday\u2019s injuries to two of the NFL\u2019s biggest stars will not deter the league\u2019s quest for one more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,514,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-350996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}