Exclusive: Early-Season Injuries Could Be Key to NFL’s 18-Game Case

The NFL's push for an 18-game season will intensify in the coming months, with Patriots owner Robert Kraft recently making public the league's goals and ambitions in that regard, though convincing the players (via the NFL Players Association) will require significant strategy.

One of the measures the NFL has identified to try to make the case for more regular-season games, according to ownership sources who have been briefed on some of the internal data, relates to their studies of how and when the most significant injuries occur in this sport. 

NFLPA interim head David White, speaking to the media prior to the Super Bowl, said the players "have no appetite" for an additional game, citing the inherent violence of the sport and concerns over health and safety, something Commissioner Roger Goodell and NFL brass anticipated, the sources said. 

Besides all of the financial reasons the league will make in its exchanges with the union, the NFL will also emphasize that, according to their years of data, the greatest risk to players tends to come early in season and not later in the season, when the games will be added. 

The NFL will argue that their data suggests players get more fortified and strengthened as the season goes on, but that the initial "shock" as one league source put it, tends to result in a rash of serious injuries as players transition from preseason to actual NFL games. 

The league will argue the risk is greater then, and that further altering how teams train and condition in the summer, combined with fewer preseason games, will help players make it through a longer season. They will seek to work with the union on ways to overhaul the run-up to the season amid the settlement to extend the season itself.

The Push For 18 Games Will Be Substantial

The NFL's desire to add an 18th-game is robust and well-known throughout the industry. 

Expanding the season deeper into February, a critical time in the US television calendar dubbed "sweeps" month and crucial for setting advertising rates - is seen as imperative to owners, and it also closely tied to the NFL's ambition for adding more regular-season games around the globe and not just in Europe and Mexico.

Negotiating an additional game is complicated, especially with the NFLPA lacking a full-time executive director at the present time, but the NFL has already put in considerable work behind the scenes planning contingencies on how an 18-game season might operate, how it would impact the playoff formats (there would be changes), how many games are played outside the US, and giving the league more negotiating power with the broadcast networks; the league has opt-outs built into those existing contracts for precisely this reason.

"The numbers will tell you the fans want this, and we know the networks want this, and it's going to help grow the game internationally," said a high-ranking NFL executive who is working closely with his owner on this matter. 

"The appetite is there, but we've got to present a compelling case to the players, and that negotiating can't really begin until they take a vote (on a new executive director)."

Rest assured, the league and its owners are ready to initiate that conversation.