Commanders Soon to Play 18th Regular Season Game?

“We would keep within that 20-game framework,” Goodell said in early January during a sit-down interview on The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations.“We went to 16 and four, and now 17 and three. So 18 and two is a logical step.”

The upside to 18 regular season games is pretty straightforward and starts with more tickets being sold to fans clamoring to enter the various stadium gates.

There are some downsides as well that the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) will need to be convinced of before agreeing to.

For starters, more regular season games means more opportunity for injuries. And then there's the opportunities lost for teams to get good looks at young and unproven players who would get more reps in the preseason.

With the elimination of the fourth preseason game there have already been precious snaps lost for players on the fringe of NFL rosters. Losing another would put even more pressure on those unproven players than there already is.

Goodell claims that the increase in regular season games to 17 hasn't led to an increase in injuries, though that's an easy 'yeah, but' to cling to when you're wearing a suit in the owner's suite and not pads putting another 60 minutes of opportunity to get hurt on the line for the sake of billionaires making more billions.

Because of this, the issue of adjusted compensation and an increased salary cap will likely become a part of any discussions between the league and the NFLPA when it comes time to act on Goodell's logical assumptions.