Roger Goodell: 18-game season is not a given

Patriots owner Robert Kraft said recently that “every team will go to 18″ regular-season games at some point in the future, but NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was less emphatic about that when asked about adding a game to the slate during a press conference in San Francisco on Monday.

Goodell noted that the NFL Players Association has been going through major leadership changes and that any plans to expand the regular season will need to be collectively bargained. Goodell said the league is “fortunate” that the current collective bargaining agreement runs through the 2030 season because they have not started the necessary conversations at this point.

“We have not had any formal discussions about it and, frankly, very little, if any, informal conversations,” Goodell said. “I’ve heard people talk about it. It is not a given that we’ll do that. It is not something that we assume will happen. It is something we want to talk about with union leadership.”

Goodell cited a number of issues that need to be discussed in order for a move to 18 games to take place, including player safety, whether there will be multiple bye weeks and the size of active rosters. It seems inevitable that those conversations to take place, but Goodell was careful not to put the cart before the horse on Monday.