The NFL did it again.
In the midst of an exciting college basketball tournament dripping with upsets, an NBA season sprinting into full swing, and MLB preparing for opening day, professional football took center stage without even being in season.
The league announced in late March that it’s expanding to a 17-game schedule in 2021, the first change to its traditional 16-game slate since the Bee Gees were at the top of the music charts. It’s a big change — the most significant since referees started actually throwing flags for roughing the passer — and it will alter both its historical record and ever-fleeting present.
This transition comes as no surprise. The notoriously weak NFL Players Association agreed to allow a potential extra game starting this year, and with an extra game estimated to bring the NFL an estimated 6% increase in profits, it was about as likely to turn that opportunity down as it is to announce an exhibition game on the moon. Put simply: Never count on the league to do anything other than increase its cash flow.
But while an extra game may seem inconsequential to the viewing public, its ramifications will reverberate like the ringing in the ears of a player after a bone-crushing hit.
Consider that although the league added an extra game, it refused to institute a second bye week, meaning the players will notch more snaps with less rest. It did eliminate one preseason game, but those are generally reserved for feeling out roster combinations rather than playing real football, so the enhanced schedule will come with exactly zero extra benefits for players whose bodies are subjected to the equivalent of multiple miniature car crashes every week. If what you thought was missing from the NFL was more attrition, more serious injuries, and an even more decimated on-field product by the time the postseason rolls around, this is just the expansion for you.
The result of this move will be an inevitable dilution in the quality of football in the regular season. Some starters will be pulled earlier in an attempt to save them for the playoffs. Others will be injured playing in meaningless games. But more games means more Sundays of fun, right? Only if your idea of fun is watching Jalen Hurts throw three picks in a loss to the 3-9 Jets. The NFL’s regular season is already an odd beast. Unlike in college football, each week is not “do or die.” The Saints can drop a game to the Raiders and still eye the No. 1 seed in the NFC, for instance. But unlike MLB or the NBA, which each play substantially more games, the NFL regular season isn’t meaningless for long stretches of time. Your team can seem hopeless, then be firmly in the playoff hunt, and then get booted from contention all in the span of a few weeks. That seems to be changing.
In addition to adding an extra game, the league expanded the playoffs from 12 to 14 teams, which means an even worse bottom tier of clubs vying to get smacked in the first round, like in the NBA. Not even Bears fans want to see Mitchell Trubisky, assuming he makes it to the playoffs in one piece, confusedly running around for three hours of an inevitable first-round loss.
The only real upside here for fans is that there will be a few extra mediocre games gracing NFL RedZone screens on Sunday afternoons. You may find yourself smiling as you huff a Jaguars-Cardinals game to get your fix, but you’ll know, deep down, that the high will be a fleeting one.
There may be one good thing to come out of an expanded schedule, though. It may finally force former NFL head coach Jeff Fisher out of retirement.
After all, he can’t go 7-9 anymore.
Cory Gunkel is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C. Follow him on Twitter @CoryGunkel.
