NFL owners officially approve a 17-game schedule. The Eagles will end upcoming season against the Jets.
The NFL owners approved expansion to a 17-game regular-season beginning in the fall. They have played 16 games since 1978.
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NFL owners made it official Tuesday, approving the expansion of a 17-game regular-season schedule beginning this fall.
It’s the first time the league has added games since 1978, when it expanded from 14 to 16 games. The collective bargaining agreement with the players limits the league to 20 total preseason and regular-season games. So, the addition of a 17th game also will be accompanied by the reduction of the preseason from four to three games.
Even though the NFL Players Association agreed to a 17th game in last year’s CBA, players around the league still are voicing objections to it from a health and safety aspect.
But NFL commissioner Roger Goodell insisted Tuesday that expanding the regular season and shortening the preseason actually is going to make the game safer. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it.
“Looking at our data, the highest rate of injury is actually in a preseason game or even in practices,” Goodell said in a conference call with reporters. “So what we’re actually doing here is following the data, following the science.”
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The league won’t be adding another bye week to the schedule. It will play 17 games over 18 weeks. The season will kick off on Thursday, Sept. 9. The last Sunday of the regular season will be Jan. 9. The playoffs will begin the following weekend.
Super Bowl LVI, which will be in Los Angeles, will be played on Feb. 13.
A 17-game schedule will mean not that every team is going to play the same number of home games every year. The plan is for AFC and NFC teams to alternate annually between eight and nine home games. AFC teams will have the nine home games this season.
The extra game will be a cross-conference game based on the previous year’s divisional standings and the division schedule rotation from two years earlier. The Eagles’ extra game this season will be against the New York Jets.
“The change is clearly going to provide us with more meaningful games that would not have been scheduled,” said Goodell, clearly not referring to Eagles-Jets. “For example, fans will get to see matchups this season like Green Bay and Kansas City, Dallas and New England, and Seattle and Pittsburgh. A lot of great matchups that they wouldn’t ordinarily see.”
While Goodell didn’t mention it Tuesday, the expansion of the regular season is expected to trigger significant changes to both offseason and in-season workouts.
There will be a reduction in the maximum amount of time players can be required to spend at practice facilities. The players union is pushing for an offseason similar to last year’s during the pandemic, when there were no spring organized team activities and meetings were held virtually on Zoom.
The owners also approved the league’s new round of TV deals Tuesday, which will give the league $100 billion in revenue between 2023 and 2033. Adding the 17th game helped maximize the revenue in those deals, as did the league agreeing to “flex” Monday night games going forward.
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Previously, games could be flexed from Sunday afternoon to Sunday night. Now, they can also can be moved to Monday.
Goodell said the league considered both the fan and competitive impacts of flexing games from Sunday to Monday, but decided the pluses -- mainly more TV money -- outweighed the minuses.
“We think we’ve done enough analysis, enough work, to do this,” Goodell said. “And it was clearly one of the more important issues in the context of our negotiations with our media partners: How do we provide them with more flexibility to provide the most attractive games for our fans and make sure we’re putting the best games on the biggest platforms?”
In other news Tuesday, Goodell said that the league does not expect to have any attendance restrictions this season. Full stadiums will be back. He thinks.
“All of us in the NFL want to see every one of our fans back,” he said. “It’s simply not the same without fans, and we expect to have full stadiums this coming season.”
Goodell also said the league will encourage, but not force, players and other team personnel to get COVID vaccinations.
“We’re going to be encouraging all of our personnel to get vaccinations,” he said. “We will be working with the NFLPA on all of these issues and continuing to communicate with our clubs.”