After taking position as the interim executive director of the NFL Players Association just over a month ago, David White gave his first interview earlier this week, per Rob Maaddi of the Associated Press. Among other topics, White addressed the concept of an 18-game season, something the league has tried to advertise in recent years as an inevitability.
Although the NFLPA shut down the idea of an 18-game schedule when negotiating the current CBA, the NFL has continued to push for it. The conversations tend to be carried out at owners meetings, where the concept is held in high regard for its profit potential. The players, though, have often expressed that there is no appetite for the change in their eyes. Regardless, the Association’s former executive director, Lloyd Howell, would routinely suggest an openness to the concept.
That’s part of the reason White was appointed as the union’s new leader. So far, White seems more than capable of voicing the players’ desires on the matter.
“The league has the right to bring any issue they want to the table and, presumably, to propose what they’re willing to give to receive what they want in negotiation, but we’ll see what happens,” White told the AP. “We haven’t talked about it yet, and it certainly is not inevitable and should not be presented as such.”
While the economic benefits of an extra game are obvious to the players, player safety concerns require further discussion into factors such as additional bye weeks, limits on international travel, restrictions on roster size, and much more. It may even be a chore to get to any such concessions, considering many players in the league were opposed to the change that brought a 17th game.
Not to mention, adding another game to the NFL schedule would require a change to the current CBA, since the agreement doesn’t expire until March 2031. Any such changes would require negotiation with the NFLPA, in which the league owners would likely need to offer some sort of incentive to edit the agreement at all.
White told the AP that, in his first month, he had attended a productive meeting with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in New York. He called the meeting “a very good start” to their relationship and ensured an agreement that both sides would have an “open and respectful” line of communication.