Report: NFL to Start Push for 18-Game Schedule This Week
PALM BEACH, Fla. — The NFL owners and NFLPA are expected to begin discussions on adding an 18th game to the regular-season schedule at owner’s meetings this week, according to a report by Charles Robinson of Yahoo! Sports.
The league’s top executives are gathered in Palm Beach for the annual meetings, which include several rule and bylaw changes on the agenda.
Adding an 18th game is not on the official agenda, but has been part of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s agenda for quite some time, and the expectation is that at least preliminary discussions in that direction will begin this week.
The negotiations on adding a game to the schedule are not part of the usual owner’s meeting process, because it involves reopening the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with the union.
The current CBA was approved in 2020 and is not scheduled to expire until 2029. The NFLPA will likely ask for significant concessions in exchange for adding yet another game to the league’s schedule, but what is at the top of their wish-list has not been reported.
The process is expected to be a lengthy one, without a likely resolution this week. Instead, this may be the opening salvo of a lengthy negotiation process between the league and the union.
Goodell has not been shy about pushing for an 18-game schedule, despite the league just moving from 16 to 17 games in 2021. He has committed to doing so at the expense of another preseason game, keeping the totality of the regular season and preseason at 20 weeks.
“I think if we continue to focus on the safety, I think 18 is a potential,” Goodell said in January. “As you know, we would take a preseason game away. We would keep within that 20-game framework. We actually started at 14 and six preseason. We went to 16 and four, and now 17 and three. So 18 and two is a logical step. But we would only do that with the players.”
The NFL played a 12-game schedule from 1947 to 1960, moved to 14 games from 1961-77 and played 16 games from 1978-2020. Beside the last four seasons, the only other times the league has had an odd number of games on the docket strike-shortened 1982 and 1987 seasons, and an 11-game schedule before and after World War II, from 1937-42 and again in 1946.
One of the reasons the NFL is keen to expand the schedule further is to continue to add international games to the docket, without taking games away from home fans. Goodell said he hopes to get the NFL to 16 annual international games, which is double the current amount.