The NFL schedule will expand to 17 games in 2021, but it appears the National Football League is already thinking about adding another game to make it even.
NBC’s Peter King wrote in Monday’s “Football Morning in America” that “most observers … think 18 games is on the way,” possibly even by 2025 or 2026.
The NFL’s current collective bargaining agreement, which runs through 2030, outlines only a move from 16 to 17 regular-season games.
Peter King also addressed Roger Goodell’s future atop the NFL, which he projects Goodell to remain in place beyond his current contract, which goes through 2023, “maybe grooming a successor in the last couple of years.” He added that one of his top priorities for the successor will be handling such a move to 18 games:
“The bell will continue to toll on health and safety, and the NFL’s ramrodding of the 17-game schedule this year leads most observers to think 18 games is on the way. How can a league that professes to care about the long-term health of its players subject them to 17 games (in 2021) and maybe 18 (by 2025 or ’26) without imaginatively pursuing ways to assure players they’re not going to be guinea pigs for the NFL’s almighty dollar? The owners have dollar signs dancing in their heads over more inventory; the players should have a roadblock dancing in theirs. That may be the first major issue for the NFL’s fourth commissioner since the Kennedy Administration.”
ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio saying it’s “just a matter of time” until an additional week is up for a vote. He put the “over-under” for another expansion at 2030, the final year of the current collective bargaining agreement.