The NFL adding an 18th game to its regular season schedule feels inevitable at some point down the road. According to Robert Kraft, the league’s owners want that shift to happen sooner rather than later.
“I want to tell you guys that we’re going to push like the dickens now to make international (games) more important with us,” Kraft told 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Zolak & Bertrand on Tuesday. “Every team will go to 18 (regular season games) and two (preseason games) and eliminate one of the preseason games, and every team every year will play one game overseas.
“Part of the reason is so we can continue to grow the cap and keep our labor happy.”
In the eyes of Kraft and other team owners, an 18-game schedule would be a win-win: The NFL could generate more revenue from additional week of regular season games, which would increase the salary cap, which would allow players to earn more money.
But that line of thinking ignores the significant physical toll that extending the season would put on players, and downplays the shift of yet another preseason game to a regular season game after the league moved from 16 to 17 regular season games back in 2021.
Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer sounded off on this issue Tuesday night on Arbella Early Edition.
“This isn’t a Robert Kraft issue specifically,” Breer said, “but it’s the talking point that he used that I’ve heard so many of (the owners) use, which is, ’18 and two versus 17 and three,’ which is basically presuming that the 20 games, preseason and regular season, are all the same, so they’re doing the fans a solid by moving one game from the preseason to the regular season.
“(That’s) so disingenuous, because the players who make the roster generally aren’t going to play very much in the preseason, and they’re so heavily managed through camp and everything else because the season is such a grind. And I think you can see the fatigue on teams at the end of the year now.
“It’s the extra game, 17 games. It’s the extra playoff game, which means 14 teams are in the playoffs now and the bye (for the No. 2 seed) is gone. … And on top of that — you played on Wednesday on Christmas a few years ago. You’re putting teams in situations where they’ve got to play multiple Thursday games over the course of the year, all the midweek stuff.
“Don’t lie to us. It is what it is. You’re chasing money. Negotiate with the players, but don’t act like this is some sort of genius plan. This is you trying to find ways to put more money in everybody’s pocket.”
The NFL’s current collective bargaining agreement runs through 2030, at which point the owners likely will push the NFL Players Association hard to adopt an 18-game schedule. Kraft may have offered a sneak peek for how the owners plan to justify this shift — but their ultimate motives seem clear.
