The case for and against the NFL moving to an 18-game regular season

It might not be in 2027, but at some point soon, the NFL is going to be moving to an 18-game season. Is that a good thing? Definitely. Is that a bad thing? Yeah, also definitely… But the trump card in any conversation around any decision the NFL makes is ‘we’ll make more money.’

What about the other arguments, though? What about the wake of their decision to have the players play more football? That’s important stuff. If there’s a debate to extend the regular season, these are some of the arguments that should be made on both sides. 

For: The ‘Monday after the Super Bowl should be a federal holiday’ guy will die

First and foremost, there is no way that the NFL is going to be able to get an 18-game season without the players also getting another bye week. That means the regular season will go from an 18-week season to a 20-week season. 

Then you tack on a five-week postseason (wild card, divisional, championship, bye week, Super Bowl) and you’re looking at a 25-week NFL season instead of our now 23-week season. 

If the NFL takes away two of their preseason games, which is something that we can assume they would also do, they’ll be able to make sure every single season ends the Sunday before Presidents' Day. 

If you can’t change the calendar, you might as well work with it. 

Against: Danger

Obviously, more games mean players play more, and playing more means there is a higher risk of injury. That’s a bad thing, but we already knew that. This is more about what the aftermath is and what they do next.

Every time the NFL does something to try to make the NFL safer, they end up doing something that completely blows it up. 

Everyone in the world was totally fine with the old kickoff and how it gave you a little more time to go take a potty break after someone scored; it was a meaningless play that ended up in a touchback, and that was good. 

So, the NFL said, ‘That’s too dangerous. Let’s move to this other kickoff that has the potential for fewer high-impact collisions.’ It was a rational idea because players were taking needless hits… so that was theoretically good. 

Then we got the first iteration of the dynamic kickoff in 2024. There were still a billion touchbacks because they didn’t do enough to penalize teams for kicking them … But it was totally fine because the plays weren’t really happening, and there weren’t any needless collisions. If the NFL didn’t change a thing, it was the perfect spot to be in. 

But they did change it, and they made it so a touchback puts the ball on the 35-yard line. That meant that teams were now incentivized to return the ball. Returning the ball means that plays happen, and this play that is happening was previously a non-play; they made the game safer, then immediately made it more dangerous. 

Remember the first play of the 2025 season? Ben VanSumeren tore his patellar tendon on the opening kickoff (and then Dak Prescott spat at Jalen Carter).

The whole point of this is that the NFL is going to find a way to muck this whole thing up. They’re going to make players play more, and they will (probably) give them an extra bye week, which is fine. But then they’ll do something like not expanding the bye week window from Weeks 4 to 14 to Weeks 3 and 18, and then someone is going to have byes on Weeks 6 and 8 or something stupid like that. The people who make the schedule are very dumb. 

For: More football to watch

It’s not just about us, as regular people, getting to watch more real football and fewer preseason games, but that also goes for the coaches. 

Cutting players after training camp, a few joint practices, and three preseason games has to be incredibly hard. They’re going on very limited information, and they’ve got to make decisions that will affect the team throughout the rest of the season. 

It sure would be a whole lot easier if they had more information and more time to make those decisions, wouldn’t it?

In a perfect world, getting rid of the preseason games and adding weeks to the regular season would mean that roster cuts would be bumped back until a week or two into the regular season. That means that teams would have more time to evaluate the roster bubble guys, where the team might need depth, and also which developmental guys get a mystery season-ending injury and have to spend the entire season on the IR. That’s a win. 

Against: Broken records

Every time someone breaks a record from here on out, there’s going to be a bunch of hardos getting all huffy about it, saying that the new record was broken in more games than the original. Then, you have to get into the discussion about stats per game vs. per carry/dropback/snap/etc.

It’s just a pain in the butt to have to deal with the whole thing because those ‘more games’ people do have a point, but it’s not a good one, and it’s impossible to actually change their mind. 

It’d just be nice for a 17-game schedule to stick around for a minute, so we don’t have to listen to those same people not only defend Dickerson’s record, but also Myles Garrett’s sack record. 

It’s just a whole can of worms, and every single one of us in the ‘breaking records’ conversation (read: probably just me) ends up being a total loser. 

For: Even records

Remember how cool it was when you could just say, ‘The Chicago Bears had a .500 record. They’re a perfectly okay team,’ and you were right? That was super cool. 

Ever since the 2021 season, when the NFL went to the 17-game schedule, the easy and brain-dead analysis for the middle-of-the-road teams has been severely limited. Being able to see a team with an even win-loss record and wave them off as irrelevant is unbelievably nice. 

In 2025, the Minnesota Vikings and the Atlanta Falcons were equally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things … But Minnesota ended the season with a 9-8 record, and the Falcons ended with an 8-9 record, so technically, the Vikings were better.  

You can really get into the weeds of it all. On a base level, they both made a mistake with their 2024 first-round quarterback, the Falcons have a more complete offense, and the Vikings have a more structured defense.

With one extra game, those teams would probably end up going 9-9. The offseason conversations wouldn’t be, ‘What’s better: a top-three wide receiver and a defense, or a more complete skill position group and a subpar defense?’

Instead, the conversation would be, ‘Both of these teams had .500 records; they have a lot of room to grow, and neither of them is close to competing in the postseason,’ and you could leave it at that. 

There’s nothing better than talking ball with someone, agreeing that inconsequential teams are inconsequential, shaking hands, and moving on. Even records (without ties) will bring us back to the pre-pandemic levels of boneheaded, yet correct, football analysis. 

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