The league’s owners voted Tuesday to expand the regular season to 17 games. It’s the first schedule expansion since 1978, when the league moved to 16 games and stayed that way for decades. The decision, which also results in one fewer preseason games, was widely expected on the heels of a series of agreements that paved the way for more action starting in the 2021 season.
A year ago, the NFL and NFL Players Association struck a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement that gave the league the right to add an additional regular season game in exchange for a higher percentage of revenue to the players. That deal guaranteed labor peace for a decade and set the groundwork for a new round of media rights deals built around the likelihood of a 17-game season. Those blockbuster agreements, worth more than $100 billion, were unveiled two weeks ago and showed the strong desire for the NFL’s product in an increasingly frayed TV landscape.
The new 17-game schedule affects the competitive structure of the league, historic statistical records and how often fantasy football players have to set their lineups. But for all the money and intricacies involved in such a sweeping decision, there’s one peculiarity that everyone will have to get used to: an odd number of games.
Save for the rare instances of tie games, teams will no longer finish the season at .500. Some teams will get to play an additional home game every year—while the rest will have to play an additional road game. There will undoubtedly be barroom and talk radio chatter from aggrieved fans who feel that their extra opponent was too difficult.
The 17th game will have teams play opponents from opposing conferences, with the conferences alternating which team is home each year. This year, AFC teams will receive the extra home game while that will flip in 2022. The additional game will feature two teams who finished in the same place in their respective divisions. For example, the Kansas City Chiefs and Green Bay Packers—who both won their divisions in 2020—will now play each other in 2021.
