Fantasy Football Would Face Major Changes With An 18-Week NFL Schedule

Michael Fabiano | Jan 22, 2025

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league will be pushing for an 18-game regular-season schedule at some point in the near future. / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

If you’re like me, you love fantasy football.

The non-stop trash talk, the weekly challenges of making add/drops and setting a lineup, the excitement of making a blockbuster trade, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Well, it appears that we’re going to get more of these “feels” in the very near future.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that moving to a schedule with two preseason games and 18 regular-season games “is a logical step.” I’m not sure when it will happen, but I can promise you as someone who has been in this industry for well over two decades… this “logical step” is absolutely going to be a reality.

This should make fantasy fans excited, right? More football means more fantasy football! While that’s true, more football could also mean more headaches and more reasons for some casual fantasy players to decide that fantasy football isn’t as much fun anymore.

In fact, there are a lot of reasons that adding another game could be bad both for the NFL and more importantly for our purposes, fantasy football. Here are some of those reasons.

Early-Season Play Could Suffer

We all hate the NFL preseason. Trust me, I get it. It’s somewhat boring. But shrinking it to just two games could have a negative effect on the quality of play in the first month of the season … especially among teams with new coaches, coordinators and personnel.

In 2024, when each team played three preseason games, the first four weeks of the regular season weren’t always great. Teams combined to average 21.6 points and 322.7 offensive yards per game. Teams allowed, on average, 10.3 sacks of their quarterbacks and offenses were penalized an average of 55.3 yards.

In the next four weeks, however, teams combined to average nearly 24 points and 350 yards of offense per game. Teams allowed, on average, 8.4 sacks of their quarterbacks and offenses were penalized an average of 48.9 times.

In terms of fantasy points, quarterbacks averaged 15.2 points in the first four weeks. That total increased to 17.1 points in the next four weeks. Running backs and wide receivers saw smaller increases, but increases nonetheless. Tight ends went from 9.5 fantasy points scored per game in the first four weeks to nearly 14 points per game in Weeks 5-8.

The potential for players to have slow statistical starts would be bad for the NFL in terms of the product that’s put on the field, but also for our fantasy football players and teams.

Potential Bye Week Problems

The NFL wants to limit player health concerns (although adding another game seems to be the opposite of that), so would it decide to add another bye week? If the league schedule opened Labor Day weekend, it could add a second bye week or a “Pro Bowl” break.

Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow offered his thoughts on an 18-game slate.

"I think it would be cool to have the normal bye week schedule that it is now, have it spread out, but then, like Week 13, do like the Pro Bowl break where you’re doing the 7-on-7 and all the skills challenges like the NBA does,"  Burrow said last year. "I think that would get more ratings for the Pro Bowl, and then it would also give everybody that bye week going into the last six games of the year."

Starting the NFL season on Labor Day Weekend and adding that extra bye would push the Super Bowl to President’s Day Weekend, which seems to be Goodell’s ultimate desire.

However, this sort of scenario would mean there would be no fantasy football for one week of the regular season. Honestly, that would suck. This would also create a scenario where bye weeks would be deeper into the season. We saw that this past year when six teams had a bye a week before the start of the fantasy playoffs. That was not ideal for those teams looking to earn a berth if some of their superstars weren’t even available.

This would cause an uproar among affected fantasy managers, who might think it’s unfair to lose players not due to injury but due to scheduling. And, they wouldn’t be wrong.

Injuries, Injuries, Injuries

Christian McCaffrey missed all but four games this season due to injuries. / Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images

Pro football is a dangerous game. One of my former player friends likened it to getting into a car accident on every play. As a result, injuries are going to happen. But when we add that 18th regular-season game, it opens up more opportunities for injuries to occur. I don’t know about you, but we saw enough injuries this past season to make fantasy fans weep.

The list of fantasy superstars who went down was a lengthy one, and it starts with the top overall pick in 2024 drafts, Christian McCaffrey. He barely played, and when he did get on the field, his numbers weren’t great. Managers also lost Breece Hall, Alvin Kamara, Isiah Pacheco, Kenneth Walker III, and David Montgomery (among other running backs).

The position that took the biggest injury hit was, surprisingly, the wide receivers.

The list is extensive and full of stars who missed time, including CeeDee Lamb, Rashee Rice, Puka Nacua, Tee Higgins, Chris Olave, Chris Godwin, Cooper Kupp, George Pickens, Stefon Diggs, DeVonta Smith, Brandon Aiyuk, and Christian Kirk (to name a few). Again, more games mean more snaps, routes run, and ultimately, more hits and injuries.

Quarterback and tight end didn’t escape the injury bug either, as we saw the likes of Jalen Hurts, Dak Prescott, Tua Tagovailoa, Jordan Love, David Njoku, Evan Engram, Taysom Hill, Jake Ferguson, and Dallas Goedert miss short or extended periods of playing time.

The bottom line here is that adding that 18th game will increase injuries and make life a bit tougher for fantasy fans. If nothing else, this will be a good time for league commissioners to increase rosters and add injured reserve spots to help managers deal with injury woes.

Load Management Concerns

With one more game being played, head coaches could decide to give players (especially older ones) lighter workloads during the season. This could be problematic, especially in backfields around the NFL. We could see even more backfield committees emerge (as if we need any more). There will be exceptions, like Derrick Henry or Saquon Barkley, but there will be more teams using a two-back system, making lineup decisions a bit harder.

Also, coaches might be quicker to pull their star players in blowouts. If the Ravens are way ahead in the fourth quarter of a Week 9 game against the Browns, for example, can you think of a reason why coach John Harbaugh wouldn’t sit Henry down the rest of the game for load management purposes? It doesn’t have to be only running backs, either.

Knowing that Tua Tagovailoa has a history of concussions, Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel could sit him down late in games that are out of reach for the opponent. Tagovailoa hasn’t played in more than 13 games in all but one of his five NFL seasons, so why risk him if you can take him out of harm’s way knowing there’s now an 18th game on the schedule?

Players Sitting Out Late-Season Games

The fantasy football season typically ends a week before the actual NFL regular season, as some teams that have clinched a postseason berth will often rest starters in their finale. We saw that happen with several teams this season, including the Chiefs and Eagles. Obviously, that’s not an ideal scenario for managers trying to win a fantasy championship.

With another game to play and load management coming into question, however, would teams be quicker to rest or limit players on the weekend before the finale? Player’s bodies take a beating, so would coaches use any chance to give their players added rest? It might not happen too often, but if and when it does, fantasy managers and teams would suffer.

What Should Fantasy Commissioners Do?

The NFL’s current Collective Bargaining Agreement with the NFLPA doesn’t end until 2031, so this whole topic could be moot for another six years. However, there have been reports that the league could push to negotiate an 18-game slate before the CBA expires. I’m sure that would mean considerable concessions on the league’s side, but at the end of the day, if it means more money in their pockets (and it does), why would each side wait?

Regardless, I would be using points scored on the same level of importance as win-loss records to determine playoff teams and seeds in fantasy leagues. It might even be better to use total-point averages for the season to give the best fantasy teams the advantages they’ve rightly earned during the regular year. So, if your team averaged 150 points in the regular season and reached the playoffs, you’d start the weeks with those 150 points.

I discussed some of these options in an earlier article on Sports Illustrated.  

No matter when it happens, whether it’s next year or six years from now, times they are changing, friends. So it’s a good idea to prepare now for the next era of fantasy football.