While most of the owners and front office personnel in the National Football League have already made this decision the Players Association may have something to say before thing become final. The owners and commissioners office have made the decision that an 18 game season would not only provide the league more exposure but it would lead to more revenue for each and every individual team because of the the addition two games for ticket sales and concession stand purchases. While that's all well and good on paper you have to consider the players here, the season already starts with mandatory workouts in June and continues all they way until the beginning of February and now they want to add two more competitive games that will likely replace the final two pre-season games.
Lets take a step back here, would two games help the NFL with exposure? Sure it would but I also feel like the NFL is pursued and watched more often because of the fact that they only have the 16 games and then the playoffs. Once a week for 16 weeks of the season, that is what makes the NFL season special and different from the rest of the sports in the country. Would the extra two games make more money for the given franchise that got to host this game? Of course it would, but at what cost to that teams players. They are asked to perform at a high level from the middle of June on and a lot of the players use the final two pre-season games as a tune up and to get there timing down in game situations. An argument for that could be that the starters barely play in those games and that they will have saved up enough energy in order to participate in two more regular season games. The counter argument to that is that with more games more injuries will take place and the second string players who you will be taking pre-season snaps from will then have to get adjusted in games that matter and will be a little slower to react which leads to injuries in general.
From a players point of view they could get paid a little but more for the 18 games instead of the 16 games, so the Players Association could fight for that but what there main concern should be is how much work the players are doing before the pre-season even begins and the number of reps all players have to take during that time. The PA should also focus on implementing a second bye week so that the teams and players could get a second break during a long season, so instead of playing around 9+ games in a row, you would play right around 6 in a row. Lastly the PA should really just work for more post career benefits with the larger possibility of a player getting injured. Surely they are trying to make the league safer with the no head to head rule but over a full eighteen game season all injuries become more of a possibility, players even get hurt during the pre-season, where according to the owners and commissioner the games don't even matter.
Eighteen games would be great for the sport as long as the players are taken care of and rewarded for doing more work, and providing them the benefits necessary to take care of themselves.
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