The NFL Swapped 3 Preseason Games For 3 Real Ones

Every August the same headline runs: the starters played one series, or none at all. It reads like coaching caution. It is mostly arithmetic.

The old split

Before 1978, an NFL team played a 14-game regular season and a six-game preseason. Six exhibitions is a lot of football that does not count, and it left room for starters to work through a long August.

Two changes, fifty years apart

In 1978 the league expanded the regular season to 16 games and cut the preseason to four. The collective bargaining agreement ratified in March 2020 permitted a 17-game regular season with a matching reduction of the preseason to three games, and that structure took effect in 2021.

14 plus 6 is 20. 17 plus 3 is 20. Only the labels changed.

That is the whole story. The August-to-January footprint has held at 20 games while three exhibitions were converted into three games with playoff consequences. The tune-up pool shrank by half, and the games that remain are the only ones a coach can afford to hold anyone out of.

• 01Before 1978: 14 regular season, 6 preseason
• 021978 through 2020: 16 regular season, 4 preseason
• 032021 onward: 17 regular season, 3 preseason