This year marks the second season during which the NFL has played a 17-game regular season, a move which caused plenty of controversy during the latest round of CBA negotiations. An 18-game slate has been floated as a possibility, and at least one owner publicly supports further expansion.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones indicated, via Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk, that he is in favor of adding one more game to the regular season and removing one from the preseason. The NFL did that in 2021, marking the first alteration to the length of the season since 1978 and dropping the preseason from four to three weeks in duration.
“One more I see, and I’m a big proponent of it,” Jones said on 105.3 The Fan. “I think that’s the right level. That allows us to, as we go into the early games of the season, that allows us to have those games. You will get better if you play those games because you will play less preseason games. You know at one time they played six preseason games in the NFL… But still I like to play two or three preseason games and 18 regular season games and [I] have been a proponent of that.”
Such a setup would certainly not be unprecedented in pro football. The CFL has played an 18-game regular season for the past 36 years, and currently has just two preseason contests per campaign. Of note, though, is the fact that – in large part due to the odd number of teams in the league – each club receives three bye weeks over the course of the year. The fact that the most recent expansion of the NFL slate was not accompanied by an extra week off during the season has been met with criticism over player safety concerns.
That may become an increasingly contentious point if the league’s predicted expansion of international games continues in the near future. More travel time between contests, coupled with an 18th game, could lead to increased calls for a second bye week to be included in the season. From a financial perspective, though, the potential benefits would be self-evident.
Increased revenue was the driving factor in the decision to move to 17 games, and the league has seen consistent spikes in the salary cap (with the recent exception of the pandemic). That trend is expected to continue, but players were split in advance of the latest CBA talks which opened the door to the latest expansion. In any event, the idea of adding further to the regular season will likely be increasingly talked-about if it receives further support.
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