While an expanded regular season appears to be inevitable, it doesn’t appear to be on the forefront of Roger Goodell’s priority list at this point in time. The NFL commissioner discussed where things currently stand in regard to increasing the regular season from 17 to 18 games during the league’s December meeting.
“We are doing analysis I would say, but we are not finalizing any plans at this point,” Goodell said, via NFL Media. Goodell added that the league will share their analysis with the players union, which would have to agree to any change to the regular season schedule.
Goodell has been a proponent of increasing the regular season while reducing the length of the preseason. In November, Goodell alluded to the NFL eventually going to an two-game preseason and 18-week regular season.
“And that will open up more inventory to allow us to play more globally,” Goodell said last month when discussing the possibility of going from 17 regular season and three preseason games to 18 regular season and two preseason games.
Goodell, who has said that he feels that the preseason is no longer needed (the NFL did not have a preseason in 2020 due to COVID), recently said that expanding the regular season by a game would set the stage for the Super Bowl to be played during a three-day weekend.
“If we got to 18 and 2, that’s not an unreasonable thing,” Goodell said. “The other thing it does, [Super Bowl Sunday] ends on up Presidents’ Day weekend, which is a three-day weekend, which makes it Sunday night and then you have Monday off.”
The NFL increased the regular season from 16 to 17 games back in 2021. A year earlier, the NFL expanded the postseason from 12 to 14 teams. In doing so, the NFL made it so only the No. 1 seed in both conferences receives a playoff bye.
It appears more changes to the NFL’s schedule are coming sooner rather than later.
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Author: Bryan DeArdo
December 11, 2024 | 6:50 pm
