It seems inevitable that the NFL will expand to an 18-game season. One concession, if you can even call it that, will be the elimination of a preseason game. That maintains a CBA-mandated 20-game overall season, two preseason games, and 18 regular season contests. But that should be far from the union’s only bargaining chip. Jerome Bettis believes the NFL must expand the 53-man roster in order to survive an even longer regular season.
“You gotta open up that roster. You gotta have more positions,” Bettis told guest host Kirk Morrison on Thursday’s Rich Eisen show. “In an 18-game season, you’re inviting more injury into play. Before you even get to the playoffs. Now, you need to have more bodies that you can put into a football game. You don’t stress out a football player’s body. Really, it wasn’t designed to play one, much less 16, now 17, and possibly 18. If you enlarge that roster, allow for more players, that gives teams a little more leeway in not running down their star players.”
The league’s timeline to push for expansion is unknown. The current CBA runs through 2030. There’s no question the league and ownership would push for an extra game by then. But reports have hinted the league could attempt expansion even sooner, though Roger Goodell recently tamped down the idea.
Currently, each team has a 53-man active NFL roster. Recent rule changes stemming from the COVID year have expanded that out on a floating basis, with teams allowed to elevate two practice squad players each week and dress up to 48 on gameday, provided at least eight of them are offensive linemen. Practice squad spots have also expanded in number and eligibility. But the league’s “hard cap” of 53 has been set that way for decades. Change is overdue.
In football’s infancy, NFL rosters consisted of just 16 players. That number expanded in the 1930s but also featured in-season roster reductions. As we noted in our 1933 recap of Pittsburgh’s inaugural year, league rules forced the team to cut from 26 to 22 by mid-October. By the late 30s, rosters expanded to 38, bumped to 40 by the 60s, with the 46-man roster created in 2011. This article does a wonderful job outlining its history if you want to nerd out.
For Bettis, health is the key to any team’s successful playoff run. The more players, the less wear-and-tear, and the better the quality will be when the postseason rolls around.
“At the end of the day, it’s about the playoffs. But if you can’t get to the playoffs without being injured, what is it all for? The NFL first has to understand the pressure that’s put on each play from a physical standpoint.”
What would the NFL roster increase to? Bumping to 55 is logical, given the current floating cap. That could also create a 50-man gameday roster. Some have advocated for getting rid of inactives altogether, a quick way to put as many players on the field as possible. But others, like Kevin Colbert, understood that could create a health imbalance between one team with a completely healthy roster and 55-man squad compared to an injured group with only, say, 52 healthy bodies.
At the least, increasing the NFL roster size should be something the union fights for when the NFL eventually puts an 18-game schedule down on the table. Frankly, the players need to fight for more than that in return. But it would be a good place to start and the minimum the NFLPA should accept.
