Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said he expects the NFL to eventually expand to an 18-game regular season, telling 105.3 The Fan’s K&C Masterpiece show that the change could arrive as soon as the 2027 season. Jones framed the move as a matter of when, not if, even as he conceded that formal talks with the players’ union have barely begun.
“It’s in everybody’s best interest,” Jones said. “I would anticipate that coming.”
The Main Development
Jones said an 18-game slate would likely come paired with a shorter preseason, a trade-off the league has floated before. The NFL moved to its current 17-game format in 2021 under the collective bargaining agreement, which runs through the 2030 season. Any further expansion would require fresh negotiation with the NFL Players Association, according to the fact sheet tied to Jones’ comments.
Jones was careful to temper his own prediction. “We have not had any formal discussions about it and frankly very little of any informal conversations,” he said. “It is not a given that we will do that.
It’s not something we assume will happen. It’s something we want to talk about with the union leadership.”
What It Means
Jones’ acknowledgment lines up with what Commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters at his pre-Super Bowl press conference in February, when Goodell said the league had not held formal talks with the NFLPA about expanding the regular season. That leaves the NFL 18-game season timeline dependent on bargaining that, by both the owner’s and commissioner’s own accounts, has not meaningfully started.
NFLPA executive director JC Tretter said in a March interview that player health and safety would be a priority for the union in any scheduling changes. The union has previously pushed back on schedule growth, and the league is also capped contractually. The current CBA limits the NFL to 17 regular-season games and no more than 10 international games, a boundary the union has signaled it intends to defend.
Context: The Logistics Behind An Extra Game
Adding an 18th game would almost certainly mean two bye weeks per team instead of one, stretching the regular season to 20 weeks. That would force the league to either push the start of Week 1 into the final week of August or scrap the off-week currently built between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl.
Neither option is simple. Since 2002, Sept. 4 has been the earliest date an NFL game has been played, and the league has not opened a season before Sept. 1 since 1997, when Week 1 kicked off on Aug. 31. The NFL has also cited the logistical demands of staging a Super Bowl that needs extra lead time to assemble.
Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio reported in May that an 18-game expansion for the 2027 season is highly unlikely. Adding weight to that view, the NFL has already scheduled Super Bowl 62 for Feb. 13, 2028, a date that assumes the league is not planning to stretch the season that year.
Players’ Union Stance
Goodell’s February comments made clear the league sees player protections as central to any bargaining. “There are things that are not good for our players that we need to make sure we’re protecting them from,” Goodell said. “And as of right now, those are all subjects of bargaining.
The league can’t expand past 10 international games. The league’s at 17 games in the CBA, that is where we’re at, and we’re going to make sure we defend our players and their health and safety, because our guys feel they know what this feels like.”
That statement, paired with Tretter’s March remarks on player safety, suggests the union’s resistance is not simply a bargaining posture but a stated priority heading into any future talks.
What’s Next
No formal negotiations between the league and the NFLPA have begun, according to both Jones and Goodell. The current CBA keeps the 17-game format locked in through the 2030 season unless both sides agree to reopen that term earlier. Jones’ comments mark one of the more direct public predictions from an owner on the subject, but the scheduling and safety hurdles outlined by the league, the union and outside reporting leave the timeline unsettled.
For more on how Jones is managing his roster this season, see Jerry Jones backs Brian Schottenheimer after Cowboys collapse and Jerry Jones open to Cowboys trade deadline moves.
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