Peter King Opposes an 18-Game Season: Here's Why

And I'm wondering if going back and literally thinking about regular humans being able to get close enough to the GM's office of the New York Giants, and now if you were within 300 yards of, you know, Nick Caserio, you'd probably get thrown in a Turkish prison, you know, uh, if, if you were just in Houston and you wanted to say something to the general manager.

I is it all bad in, in terms of how far away the NFL kind of the, the stakeholders got from their fans, or do you think that there's something about the way that the game grew up that, that actually makes it better?

Well, I'm really not cynical about the game.

Um, at all.

I love the game.

I love watching the games.

I told Scott Hansen last year that.

You know, he's my 7 hours every, every Sunday.

You know, I love, uh, yeah, I love Red Zone.

I love watching the games.

I'm still totally, absolutely into it.

I'm just not really into the minutia the way I used to be, you know, when I used to go to training camps, I would, every camp, I would ask either the coach or if I really respected the PR guy, I'd say, give me a guy on your team who's really gonna be good this year, who's really going to.

Attack the, uh, you know, who's gonna be so much better this year than we all think, but, and, and so I'd find two or three guys and meet them for the first time and get to know them, and quite honestly, that's how I, you know, developed a relationship with a lot of different players in the league because If you get them in the first year, they kind of remember you, you know, you get Kirk Cousins in that first year when nobody is thinking about Kirk Cousins and who knows, maybe down the road he remembers that you talked to him in his first training camp.

I don't, I don't know, but, but I think one of the things, Connor, that That I, I believe about our jobs is that we're the representative of millions and millions of people, you know, behind the curtain, or I shouldn't say altogether behind the curtain, but near the curtain, and, uh, they can't be there.

And I once had a journalism professor who said, your job is to Uh, is basically to tell people what they don't know and take them where they can't go.

And that's how I always treated this job.

And so I, I am, I, I am unhappy about a few things with the game, which I write about, very unhappy with this thing about constantly adding to, uh, the number of games, you know, NFL is hell bent on, uh, on playing an 18th game.

I mean, and then they say, well, we're taking away one of the preseason games.

That's the most disingenuous pile of crap I've ever heard in my life.

Everybody knows it.

Everybody knows it.

The fans, the commissioner , the owners, they all know it.

And, and so I don't like that.

I don't like this getting into bed with gambling.

Oh my God, it is gonna ruin so many lives and 10 years there will be more people going to GA than going to than who will go to AA.

I just, I, I just think that sometimes the NFL really loses its conscience, uh, but that doesn't mean, and I mean, obviously the thing about head trauma is bothersome.

You have to make peace with that if you're gonna watch the games.

And one of the reasons I hate the concept of the 18th game.

is that players already, I write in my book, you gotta read what I write about Creed Humphrey versus Mike Webster.

Half a century apart, but I mean, Connor Creed Humphrey is playing about, I, I, I'm just gonna say he's playing not double the amount of snaps that Mike Webster played, but hundreds, hundreds more snaps in a season than Mike Webster played and, and, and, you know, so don't go telling me that, you know, that.

You know, the helmets are better, which they are.

The helmets are significantly better.

Don't go telling me we've taken a lot of the contact out, and they have, which is great.

But don't go telling me that you care all that much about the players, when you're adding games, adding snaps, and listen, Connor, last thing I'll say about this is that You know, look, in, in, uh, 2020, I think it was the last year when there were 16 games.

I think that's right, 2020, uh, you know, basically, if you go from 16 games to 18 games, you're asking starters.

On average per year to play 125 more snaps, and don't tell me that doesn't count.

That doesn't, that counts.

That is detrimental to the long-term health of players.

It's interesting too because you, and, and this is an example, like a very small potatoes example, but last year, um, we did a cover story on special teams went completely bonkers.

There were double the amount of blocked field goal kicks.

There were 10 amount more kick return touchdowns.

Like everything about special teams, it became a true third of the game.

And when Roger Goodell was in London addressing fans, he said, sometimes you change a rule.

And then something else happens that you don't expect.

It's sort of a cascading effect that's interesting to us and we get to see it in real time.

And what's shocking to me is that like the NFL doesn't know, like it knows what it wants, but it ultimately will never know the full consequences until they play the scenario out, which is wild to me, right?

It's like adding a game and then adding another game.

You know, there's the conservative thought that, OK, it's not going to be that bad.

There's the disastrous thought and then there's whatever ends up happening, bringing gambling into sports.

Well, maybe it won't be that bad.

Maybe it'll be Tim Donaghy in the NFL and it's like, there are people at the wheel of the Titanic essentially.

And it's just like, well, we, we really don't know where this is going, even though it's one of, it's this monolith sports industry.

And I think like from large to small, the ramifications of all these decisions, it's fascinating to me that like, well, just in real time, they're along for the ride.

The thing is, Connor.

You're not going to know, especially about the head trauma part of it.

You're not going to know for 1520, 25, 30 years.

That's all there is to it, because, you know, look, some guys have heeded uh the call of people like Ian McKee, like Chris Borland, he retired after 1 year, and, and there are others who clearly have left the game before their time.

And part of the reason, at least part, maybe most, if not all, uh, is because they've got a good deal of money in the bank and they wanna be able to make sure they enjoy that money in the bank.

So, so I think the fact that the NFL can make all these decisions and say, hey, look, we're doing position-specific helmets.

We're doing a lot for the players, and listen.

Don't get me wrong.

I think the NFL is doing some good things, OK?

In taking away 2 days, taking away a lot of the contact in practices, and all that.

I think the NFL is doing a lot of good things.

But, you know, you're fooling yourself if you think that it isn't just adding to the danger and the potential mayhem down the road.

If, uh, you think, hey, man, we want another game.

Let's have an 18th game, man, now we can play all over the world, we can do this, we can do that.

Listen, the 17th game was supposed to allow the NFL to be able to have the freedom of having, in essence, 16 of the 32 teams every year, have a 9th home game.

And take that 9th game, and play it somewhere else.

Whether you wanna play it in Abu Dhabi, or Peking or Beijing, or, or Australia or wherever, you already have the ability to do that, OK?

And the fact that now they say, well, if we go to an 18th game, we have more ability to play games everywhere.

It's, I don't know, the, the, uh, the rules change as people go along.