Make no mistake, whenever the NFL moves to an 18-game schedule, everybody involved will make more money. Player salaries will rise by the equivalent of an extra week. They will just have to play an extra week of football in order to get it. That is an extra week of abuse on the body, and of risk of injury.
Pittsburgh Steelers S Miles Killebrew isn’t worried about that so much as he is about other aspects of their plans. The NFL may not have an 18-game schedule this year, but it will have Christmas Day games on a Wednesday.
To Killebrew’s mind, you can adjust to playing an extra game as a professional. It is tougher to adjust to odd schedules with unusual playing times and short intervals of rest. Granted, the NFL only has Wednesday games this year because that is when Christmas falls. Christmas in 2025 is on a Thursday, and the year after on a Friday. But they will play on a Tuesday if necessary—in 2029. And again on a Wednesday in 2030. It’s all about one thing, and it’s not the Yuletide spirit.
“That’s something we’re going to have to adapt to”, Gerry Dulac quoted Killebrew as saying about the NFL’s future plans. “The train will keep rolling. Money moves it forward and there’s a lot of ad revenue to be made in 18 games”.
An eight-year NFL veteran, Miles Killebrew knows a thing or two about the business side of things. He is a player who has lived perpetually on the bubble as a special teamer. Only this past season did his earn his first accolades, both a Pro Bowler and All-Pro teamer.
At 31 years old, there isn’t much he hasn’t seen. He confesses that this year’s schedule is a first, however. “Here’s the deal, whether it’s 18 games or 17 games, it takes a professional to be able to bounce back to transition from one week to the next”, Killebrew said pragmatically. “Where it becomes an issue, it becomes even harder when there’s less margin for error, when you’re playing games on Thursday, on Wednesday, on Christmas, three games in 10 days”.
But he knows it is not the considerations of himself and his fellow players that is of paramount importance. Killebrew and the rest of them are businessmen, and they have a job to do. They are simply being asked to provide more of their services, for commensurate compensation.
“Hey, we’re in the entertainment business”, he said. “People want to be entertained”.
And let’s face it, even those of us who might complain about the Steelers playing on Christmas Day are still going to watch, or at least most of us will. That is why the NFL is able to do what it does, and why it will get its 18th game in time. It is for the simple fact that they know the market will follow it. That is what happened when they added the 17th game. It’s what happened when they pushed onward into Christmas territory. Hence, Wednesday games with an 18th game on the horizon.
