The NFL currently plays a 17-game schedule, entering the third season of the expanded schedule after almost 35 years of playing 16 games. Yet it feels inevitable that at some point, the league will expand the season again and go to 18 games. If that is the case, how would the NFL create the schedule rotation and add the 18th game?
John Sigler of Saints Wire recently looked into that possibility and gave some options on how to create the schedule, including adding a second bye week — the NFL used two bye weeks in 1993 with the new television deals that year — and moving the Super Bowl to the day before Presidents’ Day.
He also came up with an idea to have a fixed non-conference matchup each year for teams to be their 18th game. The matchups were mostly created based on geography and history between the teams. We say mostly because the matchup given to the Jets is the furthest thing from geographically close.
Naturally, you would think the Jets would be given the Giants for this kind of matchup. Instead, the Giants were matched up with the New England Patriots, though it’s hard to argue with the history there, considering the Patriots beat the Giants to complete a 16-0 regular season in 2007 before the Giants ended the Patriots’ hope for complete perfection by beating them in Super Bowl XLII (the David Tyree catch) and then again in Super Bowl XLVI (the Mario Manningham catch).
So who did the Jets draw? The Los Angeles Rams. Here’s what Sigler wrote:
Remember how we mentioned all but one of these matchups made sense geographically? We just ran out of other options, and Jets-Giants was too obvious (as is Rams-Chargers). Asking fans to make a cross-country flight would be difficult, but it’s been done before, and the NFL’s spin doctors would put out a master class while talking up this game as an East Coast vs. West Coast affair tying the whole nation together, or something ridiculous. With that said, it would make much more sense to formalize the Subway Series here and introduce a Battle for L.A. to put both cities’ opposing fanbases at ease, though it would require shuffling some other matchups around.
Not only would it be East Coast and West Coast, but also a matchup of the two biggest markets in the country in New York and Los Angeles. Sigler does admit it makes more sense to just make Jets-Giants and Rams-Chargers the permanent fixtures. In any event, it’s interesting to think about who teams could face in what feels like an eventual 18th game down the line.
