Will the NFL adopt an 18-game schedule and if so, when? Clarity on that matter could be coming soon.
Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports reported that Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league’s owners will make an 18th game a major talking point in the offseason, starting with the forthcoming spring meetings.
“Multiple league and player’s union sources have told Yahoo Sports they believe Goodell and the owners will begin to make more assertive efforts at adding an 18th game to the NFL’s regular season starting this summer,” Robinson reported. “And according to two high-level team executives, they believe talks about that will intensify at next week’s spring meetings in Florida.”
Robinson additionally detailed where the greatest complications are likely to emerge.
The thorniest issue that is expected to be a tug-of-war amongst the owners is whether the league as a whole is willing to budge on the current revenue split, which pays out 48 percent of all football-related revenue to players, with a maximum split of 48.8 percent based on the performance of media rights contracts. The players have long sought to fight their way back to a 50-50 revenue split with the league’s owners. It’s believed that will once again be a union goal if they were to agree to reopen the CBA and add an 18th game to the regular season.
At the moment, union leaders know the NFL owners are on a clock. If the league wants to opt out of its current rights deal in 2029, the profit-maximizing approach would be to do so with an 18-game regular season slate cemented. Which means that there’s a diminishing window to make that happen with each passing year. And thus far, the NFLPA’s willingness to embrace an 18th game appears to be going in the wrong direction. In the summer of 2024, the union’s executive director, Lloyd Howell suggested an open stance on negotiating an additional game, even going so far as to call the expansion “attractive.” But that stance appeared to take a noticeable shift in February, falling back into the union’s historical hard-line approach of saying “no” when it comes to more games.
Howell also said that among the players he’s talked to, he’s heard no support for an 18-game schedule.
“No one,” Howell said, per Robinson. “17 games, for many of the guys, is too long.”
The NFL moved to a 17-game schedule in 2021, making it the only of North America’s major professional sports leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL) where teams play an odd number of regular season games. From 1978-2020 (excluding 1982 and 1987’s strike-shortened seasons), the NFL played with a 16-game schedule.
Other key issues expected to be discussed at the spring meetings include kickoff rules and whether the “Tush Push” should be banned.