The interim chief of the NFL Players Association had no conversation with the commissioner of the League Roger Goodell about a passage to an 18 -game calendar.
Having spent the 16 game season at 17 in 2021, the number of pre-season games is reduced from four to three, it has long been thought that the NFL will eventually look for an 18th match.
In February, Goodell said that a regular 18-game season with only two pre-season games “could be a possibility,” pointing data that showed concussion at a historically low level in 2024.
The executive director of the NFLPA, Lloyd Howell Jr., quickly pushed back, saying: “No one wants to play an 18th match. Nineteen. Seventeen games is already, for many guys, too long.”
A new expansion of the season would force the NFL and the NFLPA to renegotiate the collective negotiation agreement of the NFL, which does not express before March 2031.
Howell left his post in July, saying: “It is clear that my leadership has become a distraction.”
It was replaced by David White last month, by the acting executive director rejecting the thought that a move to an 18 game calendar is a fatal conclusion after the expansion at 17.
White told the Associated Press: “The League has the right to bring any problem they want to the table and, probably, to propose what they are ready to give to receive what they want in negotiations, but we will see when this will happen.
“We haven’t talked about it yet, and it is certainly not inevitable and should not be presented as such.”
