The end of the 2021–2022 NFL regular season marks the completion of the league’s first ever 17-game schedule.
This season, the American Football Conference hosted the home games for the additional week, while next season they will be hosted by the National Football Conference.
The growth of the game may be substantially emphasized this year due to the plummet in the leagues’ revenue in 2020 because of capacity limits as a result of COVID-19.
With the new media deals, after the completion of the current season, the NFL is expected to generate far more than 15 billion USD in revenue.
So if the monetary benefits from this change and the increase in fan morale all seem favourable, why is it so highly disputed? When it was first introduced, in contrast to the commissioner’s eagerness, tensions among players and executives arose.
The most common way a team will now be able to prevent a losing record is with a tied game, resulting in an 8–8–1 record.
A team’s record is crucial when deciding who clinches a playoff spot and how the team will be ‘seeded’ for the playoffs.
Many first-string players do not start in the preseason to avoid getting unnecessarily injured, and so newer, unproven players can be evaluated.
Plus, owners proposed a pay cap for the extra regular season game of 250,000 USD, which would mean many high performing players would be taking a pay cut compared to the other regular season games.
