We are Officially Going to 17 NFL Games this Season
Like Thanos, this was inevitable.
The 17-game schedule is official, announced today by the National Football League:
Beginning in 2021, the NFL is expanding to a 17-game regular season. pic.twitter.com/skNisJwPS2
— NFL (@NFL) March 30, 2021
Yeah man! We’ve been blessed with Eagles at Jets as our 17th game this season. Can’t wait.
The good thing is that we’re rewarded with Chiefs/Packers, which should be rad. Saints and Titans is a low-key solid game. Colts/Bucs, too. Carson Wentz vs. Tom Brady. It’s awesome baby! (Dick Vitale voice)
Obviously the concern here is health and safety. We didn’t do a column on the 17-game schedule this week, but think about how banged up the Eagles have been over the last few years. They couldn’t even make it through a five-game season at decent health. They were dropping like flies before these campaigns even began. It resulted in two of the most horrendous years of Eagles football we’ve ever seen.
I guess we’ll have to just see how it goes. No longer can we make the Jeff Fisher joke about going 7-9, because that’s not possible in a 17-game slate. You’d be 7-10 or 8-9. And there will be no .500 teams, unless you find a way to go 8-8-1.
The other thing is schedule imbalance, and you’re gonna have teams playing eight home games and nine road games, which is dumb. You’re going to have to put asterisks on single-season achievements, because some guys will play 17 games compared to the 16 max of yesteryear.
I personally find this to be dumb, but at the end of the day the players and owners are making more money and we’re getting more football, so it is what it is. Oh yeah, and that 4th preseason game is finally going the way of the Dodo Bird and Passenger Pigeon.