By Charles Robinson, Senior reporter
NEW ORLEANS — “No one wants to play an 18th game. No one.”
Those were the words of NFL Players Association executive director Lloyd Howell on Wednesday, in what amounted to the union’s strongest pushback against another expansion of the NFL’s regular season. It comes three days after NFL commissioner Roger Goodell laid additional foundation to pursue adding another regular-season game to the league’s 17-game slate.
“[Roger] is trying to shape a narrative, for sure,” Howell said Wednesday, during his annual state of the players union address. “About the length of the season, how attractive it could be to the fan base, two preseason [games], 18 games, ends around Presidents [Day] weekend. I’ve heard all this. … Look, I came from a corporate world where you’re constantly trying to shape the narrative, whether it was on Wall Street or with clients. I don’t see it [as] any more or less than that.”
How the season expansion narrative is getting shaped by the league — largely through a Goodell-endorsed spectrum of the NFL becoming a safer game with fewer injuries — appears to be where the battleground is forming between the two sides. That much has been clear this week, with the commissioner suggesting Monday that data regarding declining concussions, safer kickoffs and equipment enhancements has helped create potential traction for negotiating an 18-game season in the next collective bargaining agreement.
Howell seemed to chafe at such a suggestion Wednesday.
“I heard the commissioner remark recently that the league has made enough progress on health and safety to expand the regular season,” Howell said. “Frankly, we’re not sure how he’s reaching that conclusion based on the data we’ve been given access to. We believe there’s much more to be done, taking schedule and travel for example. This season several teams played two games within a 100-hour span or three games in 10 days. The Packers flew from Green Bay to Brazil and back in 48 hours. Players are feeling the physical toll. We want to look at the data.”
The topic of another expansion has been stalking the league since the 17th game was added in the last collective bargaining agreement — partially driven by a Goodell revenue goal set in 2010. That aim was pointed at raising annual league revenue to at least $25 billion by the 2027 fiscal year. Almost since that number was tied to the NFL’s financial horizon 15 years ago, the belief was that an expansion of the regular season to 17 games, and then eventually 18, would likely be a significant pillar toward achieving such a lofty goal.
As the years have rolled forward, increased revenues from other forms of media, ballooning rights contracts, international games and income from gambling-related partnerships became part of the matrix aimed at reaching that $25 billion annual number. It also set the stage for a very difficult collective bargaining agreement, which was reached in 2020 — but not without significant player reservations on the way to getting a deal passed.
Now it sets the stage for the next CBA negotiation and the push by the league for an 18th game. For now, Howell said it had largely existed only in concept — introduced by Goodell prior to the 2024 NFL Draft — but with no substantive discussion since that moment.
“I think the first time I heard Roger mention 18 [games], I think it was draft weekend and he did an interview on ‘The Pat McAfee Show,’” Howell said. “And the first conversation was, ‘Did I hear you right? Did you just say 18?’ And he indeed owned the fact that he said 18. Since that time, we haven’t had any discussions about it. Their side hasn’t raised it. We certainly haven’t raised it.
“Any commentary outside of a formal negotiation is just commentary. It’s a player’s decision as to what they will agree to do or not. Right now, when I have talked to the players over the last two seasons, no one wants to play an 18th game — no one. Seventeen games is already, for many of the guys, too long.”
Of course, being against 18 games is far different than completely striking it from happening in the next CBA negotiation. As opposed as the NFLPA appears to be, there has been no hard declaration from the union that it absolutely won’t happen. Even pushing back Wednesday, Howell rattled off a laundry list of negotiation points that would lay the groundwork for an 18th game getting onto the negotiating table, which is at least suggestive that the union’s leadership has thought about what a bridge to schedule expansion would look like.
Among the topics that Howell suggested would need to be worked through: health and safety, rest and recovery periods, bye weeks, offseason practices, overseas games, on-field rules changes, benefits, incentives, roster sizes and more.
“Then we get to the economics,” Howell said. “If I’m asking my work force to work more, it’s not as simple as I’m going to fall back on the overall revenue split that currently exists.”
And that point appears to be the bottom line. Not whether or not anyone among the players wants an 18th game, but whether they can be negotiated into the expansion through a litany of concessions. That’s ultimately what drove the last expansion in 2020 and it’s likely what will drive the next, too. The league and union have until the end of the 2030 season to hammer that out, if it doesn’t happen earlier. Until then, the NFLPA has shown the league where it has drawn a line. Now it’s up to Goodell and the league’s franchise owners to move it.