At a time when most believe an 18-game regular season is a matter of \u201cwhen\u201d not \u201cif,\u201d Commissioner Roger Goodell continues to frame expansion of the schedule as a matter of \u201cif.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goodell addressed the possibility of an 18-game season during a Friday appearance on The Pat McAfee Show.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne, safety has to be the primary concern, right?\u201d Goodell said. \u201cIf you can\u2019t do it safely for our players, we\u2019re not gonna do it. And that\u2019s why I would say it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, he later used \u201cwhen\u201d and not \u201cif\u201d when discussing growth of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think when you get to that point, double byes will be a question, roster size will be a question,\u201d Goodell said. \u201cAll of those things are gonna be really important to consider, to balance, both with the players\u2019 association and with the Competition Committee, so that we can do it really successfully.\u201d<\/p>\n
As to roster size, Goodell later suggested that there would be two or three additional spots on the active game day roster.<\/p>\n
The argument for growing the regular season continues to be shrinking the preseason. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut, listen, I\u2019ve been critical of our preseason,\u201d Goodell said. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s the kind of standard that we should be putting out there. I think season structure \u2014 that includes the offseason, that includes everything up to training camp, and the season, the postseason \u2014 we should be looking at that all the time. Evaluating what\u2019s good, what\u2019s bad. What could we make better? And I think there\u2019s still improvements in doing that, obviously, reducing [the] preseason would be the top of my list.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the preseason isn\u2019t supposed to live up to any standard. It\u2019s glorified practice, a dress rehearsal. There\u2019s no competitive element to it. It\u2019s a fiction of what football truly is, once the season starts.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 pushing the season to 320 games that could be sold to networks and streamers.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 10 more total windows, simply by adding one game and one bye.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cinevitably\u201d but soon. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a time when most believe an 18-game regular season is a matter of \u201cwhen\u201d not \u201cif,\u201d Commissioner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,514,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-630692","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\/630692","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=630692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}