Throughout a Friday look on “The Pat McAfee Present,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell mentioned the poorly stored secret relating to the league’s want to finally shift to an 18-game common season.
“I feel we’re good at 17 [games] now,” Goodell mentioned, as Terrible Asserting shared. “We’re taking a look at how we proceed. I am not a fan of the preseason. I do not assume we want three preseason video games anymore. I do not purchase it. I would slightly change a preseason recreation with a regular-season [game] any day. That is simply choosing high quality, proper? If we acquired to 18 [regular-season games] and two [preseason games per team], that is not an unreasonable factor.”
Goodell additionally talked about that extending the common season may push Tremendous Bowl Sundays to Presidents’ Day weekends, which means many Individuals would take pleasure in championship video games as a part of three-day breaks from work. Such an thought allegedly has been within the works since at the very least 2021.
“That finally ends up on Presidents’ Day weekend, which is a three-day weekend, which makes the Sunday night time, after which you have got Monday off,” Goodell added in the course of the phase, per Michael David Smith of Professional Soccer Speak.
Cowboys proprietor and normal supervisor Jerry Jones publicly introduced in December 2022 that he had “been a proponent of” the format touched upon by Goodell on the NFL Draft website on Friday. As lately as this previous January, Boomer Esiason hinted it was a matter of when, not if, the league goes to an 18-game season.
On the identical time, Esiason famous that the NFL Gamers Affiliation “is gonna have quite a lot of pushback on” enjoying an additional significant recreation every marketing campaign attributable to fears associated to accidents. He advised the league may persuade the NFLPA by increasing energetic and/or practice-squad rosters.
Smith talked about that an additional week of regular-season motion would imply more cash for everybody concerned because of income generated through ticket gross sales, in-stadium purchases and media rights offers. No matter what critics might imagine, we’re nearer than ever to the 18-game/two preseason contest schedule changing into an NFL actuality.
