During the 2026 draft, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell seemed to speak carefully about the league’s desire to get to an 18-game regular season at some point down the road.
For an update shared on Tuesday, league insider Jason La Canfora of SportsBoom US spoke with one unnamed high-ranking official from a team about what seems to be an inevitable schedule change.
When 18-game NFL regular season is “going to happen”
“They want it, and they want it sooner rather than later,” the official said about league owners looking to replace a week of preseason games with a week of regular-season contests. “It’s going to happen.”
According to La Canfora, that official “believes 18 games will be here by 2028.”
Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk has pointed out throughout the offseason that Super Bowl LXII in February 2028 doesn’t have a locked-in date because league owners hope to come to an agreement with the NFL Players Association for an 18-game regular season before the full 2027 schedule is released.
Per the terms of the collective bargaining agreement that runs through the 2030 campaign, the union must agree to any expansion of the regular season. It’s believed such an agreement will include an additional bye week being added to the schedule and increases in active-roster sizes for teams.
How owners plan to convince players to accept expanded regular season
“There is a financial case to be made to the players,” La Canfora explained about upcoming conversations about expanding the regular season, “and the NFL is well prepared to present medical data as well to argue that injury risk is actually greater earlier in the season than later.”
La Canfora also mentioned that the “Super Bowl would be pushed back to the middle of February, and the logistical aspects of this are extreme.”
The NFL currently avoids starting regular seasons over Labor Day weekends due to concerns related to television ratings. However, Florio suggested in March that “the NFL likely will return to Labor Day weekend — where the league is able to play on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday” once the league finalizes a schedule that includes 18 weeks of regular-season action and teams receiving two byes.
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