NFL commissioner Roger Goodell made a clear statement during Super Bowl week, stating that the league hopes to have every team in the NFL play at least one international game each season heading into its 18th regular season game. That echoed comments from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who said something similar on his radio show last month.
However, in order for the NFL to get an additional 18th game, the league would need the approval of the NFL Players Association. On Tuesday, NFLPA interim executive director David White dismissed Goodell’s request Monday.
“Our membership has no interest in an 18th game of the regular season,” NFLPA interim executive director David White said during the league’s annual Super Bowl week news conference, citing player health and safety concerns that come with an extended regular season. “… Game 18 is not arbitrary for us. It’s a very serious matter. It’s something that comes out of negotiations and unless the players have the opportunity to take all those factors into account, take that into consideration and then negotiate, agree or not accept Game 18, nothing will progress.
“But as things stand, the players have made it very clear that they don’t have any interest in it.”
According to ESPN, both White and NFLPA President Jalen Reeves-Maybin, currently a linebacker for the Chicago Bears, said the NFLPA has not yet been contacted to discuss Game 18.
“There are 31 owners and they all have different agendas and different perspectives on things,” Reeves-Maybin said when asked if overtime was inevitable. “… Maybe that’s a way they’re trying to influence. … We haven’t had any 18-game discussions. It’s not something that players are excited about or really want to push for. And then we put a lot of work in and we put out a good product every year, but it’s not something we feel we need.”
White added: “Arbitrary statements have no weight. This is a free country. People can say what they want, but … is this increasingly inevitable? … The answer is absolutely not. That is a point of negotiation.”
Over the past decade or so, most NFL owners have been in agreement with the NFLPA. In 2011, ownership allowed players to end the lockout and union disqualification, which left the league facing lawsuits, and simply slashed rookie salaries by the rookie salary scale. After the 2010 season, the league’s salary cap remained at $123 million or less from 2011 to 2013, the same as the 2009 salary cap. The owners stopped spending more money on players; they just decided to take money out of the pockets of newer players who didn’t have a seat in the league because they weren’t yet NFL players, and give it to veterans who could vote.
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That, combined with changes to the practice schedule, was enough for the NFLPA to sign a new 10-year collective bargaining agreement (CBA). After reaching an agreement in 2011, the NFLPA rushed to sign an 11-year CBA, in part because of the uncertainty during the epidemic that prevented the league from playing in front of fans in 2020.
After more than 20 years of pushing players around, NFL owners appear to be making a statement telling the NFLPA what they will finally agree to in public, rather than having these negotiations behind closed doors.
The current CBA is set to expire after the 2030 season, but the NFL hopes to engage in labor peace talks before signing a new broadcast deal. Their current deal has an opt-out that can be triggered in 2029, so the league will likely want to start talks with TV and streaming companies then. So while the CBA is theoretically set to expire after 2030, management is more likely to want to reach a deal with the union around 2028 or 2029.
Generally speaking, the NFLPA’s biggest gains (at least lately) haven’t come in the form of direct financial benefits to players. Ownership doesn’t want its share to get smaller, on the contrary, they actually publicly advocate the opposite. While some owners are willing to spend well above the salary cap, using future salary cap space to pay current players and wait for the salary cap to continue to increase by $25 million per year, thereby offsetting salary cap debt (which is tied to the league’s shared revenue), not every team is playing this game. To put it into perspective, the Cleveland Browns will spend approximately $362 million more on players from 2020 to 2025 than the Los Angeles Rams. Goodell said last summer that NFL owners were openly questioning the integrity of the league’s salary cap system.
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Which is to say: No, bosses don’t give players a bigger piece of the pie. They never really do. Instead, their goal is to grow the pie. From the NFLPA’s perspective, the question is how big the pie can get before an 18-game season and 14-team playoffs start knocking players out of the league faster due to injuries.
The jump from the standard 16 games and 12-team playoffs in 2019 to 18 games and a 14-team playoff on a rookie contract could mean an additional 12 games for a player before his rookie deal ends, the first time he can actually negotiate on the open market. This is important.
I’m sure the NFL is willing to give up some non-financial concessions for these extra games, but there isn’t much left on the to-do list. Practice time has been slashed and padded practice has been largely limited. Players have enacted laws that reduce penalties for marijuana policies. Kraft said an extra game in the regular season would also come with an extra bye and would end a week of NFL preseason games, but it would be difficult to compare the regular season to the preseason for older players, most of whom have already missed that game, unless it also means the loss of an extra week of training camp practices. Does the league still want fewer practices? Does NFL ownership or the NFLPA care about this? We’re about to find out.
It will be interesting to track what demands the NFLPA plans to make in exchange for an 18th game, whether they get them or whether ownership once again sways the players union. At least this time, the NFLPA won’t be led by an executive director who is under investigation by the FBI for allegedly bargaining to bury a grudge against the NFL.
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Regardless, the Packers’ union representative is right tackle Zach Tom, and other backups include quarterback Jordan Love, tight end Tucker Kraft and safety Zayne Anderson, who is set to become a free agent in 2026. Kicker Brandon McManus is the union’s vice president.
