there is an article in The Athletic reporting this story. Basically, owners conceding they cant get 18 games so attempting to get 17 with the concession that they drop 1 or 2 preseason games.
[
theathletic.com]
The NFL has dropped a proposal for an 18-game season and is now focused on expanding the regular season to 17 games, ownership sources said. Owners were briefed on the change at committee meetings in Houston this week. The current schedule is 16 games.
“Not enough owners support (for) 18 and players would not go for it either,” one of the sources said of why the change. The 17-game proposal will be paired with a reduction in the preseason by a game or two from the current four.
There are 18 months remaining on the current 10-year collective bargaining agreement, and the big ask from the owners in the early negotiations that started this summer has been an expansion of the regular season. Owners even floated earlier the idea that players could take two games off an 18 game season.
That idea was widely mocked as unfeasible given fans would be unhappy if they bought tickets and didn’t see all the players.
“Quite honestly, that is a hard sell to fans,” Green Bay Packers president Mark Murphy told reporters this summer.
“We’re looking at the overall structure of the season,” said Murphy, who is a former NFL player and is on the owners’ labor committee “And quite honestly, our preseason is not very good…I would be very concerned about the health and safety aspects of adding two regular season games. And so I think there’s a number of things we’re looking at. I think also…(is) the possibility of expanding the playoffs.”
While the NFL has dropped a game from its regular season length proposal, it is not abandoning possibly expanding the playoffs by an extra team per conference. That is still being discussed by owners. The NFLPA has resisted previous efforts to extend the season.
“I don’t see an 18-game schedule — under any circumstances — being in the best interest of our players,” NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith told ESPN.com in July. “If somebody wants to make an 18-game proposal, we’ll look at it. I haven’t seen anything that makes me think that it would be good for the players.”
The NFLPA couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on if it has a different position on 17 games. No talks are currently scheduled between the NFLPA and NFL, but they are expected to resume later this year or early in 2020. Beyond regular season expansion, key issues are the commissioner’s disciplinary authority, revenue share, drug policy on marijuana, and expanding pensions.
