The stage was already set when the new Collective Bargaining Agreement was signed last spring, which means that the announcement in March only seemed like a formality: the NFL will be moving to 17-game regular season format beginning in 2021.
The 17-game season is a complex and controversial topic — from revenue, to player safety, to quality of the on-field product — and also one that has the potential to re-write the league’s history books. Standards established during the 16-game era between 1978 and 2020 will no longer be relevant, after all, as players are given one additional chance to add to their numbers and bolster their statistics.