NFL makes 17th regular-season game official

We briefly mentioned the other day about the National Football League likely moving to a 17-game regular-season schedule this week, and today they decided to make it official.

In the first significant change to the schedule since 1978, the league will expand the regular season to 17 games. It will also reduce its number of preseason games from four to three.

The league has said that each team will host 10 games a season, and that the conference that gets an extra home game will go back-and-forth each year. In 2021, the AFC will get the extra regular-season home game, meaning that each NFC team will host two preseason games to get to that total of 10.

The Minnesota Vikings’ extra regular-season game for 2021, as we figured, will be a trip to Los Angeles to take on the Chargers.

According to NFL.com, the new schedule construction will also ensure that, starting in 2022, each team will play internationally at least once every eight years. The league is looking to schedule up to four international games a year with a particular focus on Canada, Europe, Mexico, South America, and the United Kingdom. Teams can also continue to volunteer to play home games overseas, but now every team is going to be a part of the overseas rotation whether they want to be or not.

Looking at you here, Green Bay.

There will be no more bye weeks added to the schedule, so the regular season is now 18 weeks long rather than 17. That means that the Super Bowl has been pushed back a week and will now be played on 13 February 2022.

Starting in 2021, there will be one more game that matters on the NFL schedule and one less that doesn’t. What do you think of that idea, everyone?