We still don't know when it may happen, but it seems inevitable that the NFL adds a 17th regular-season game to each team's schedule. Now, thanks to Ben Fischer of the Sports Business Journal, and later confirmed by the NFL, we know the formula for determining the opponent for that extra game.
When the NFL goes to 17 games, the extra game will be:
*Out of conference (AFC-NFC)
— Ben Fischer (@BenFischerSBJ) December 16, 2020
*Based on divisional standings from the preceding season
*on a rotating divisional basis.
NFL Media's Nick Shook reports that NFL owners met virtually on Wednesday but did not vote to add a 17th game for each team to the 2021 regular season. However, they did agree on a formula to use to determine the opponents.
"New scheduling procedures with respect to the 17th regular-season game will 'be an inter-conference match-up based on divisional standings' from the previous campaign," wrote Shook, "and 'on a rotating divisional basis' in a fashion similar to current scheduling standards that annually see one AFC division play an entire NFC division, and so on. This change should mean the football-viewing world will see more marquee matchups across conferences that would traditionally be limited by the annual interconference divisional rotations."
What does that mean exactly? Let's pretend the NFL added a 17th game to the 49ers' 2020 schedule based on this formula. That means San Francisco, which won the NFC West last season, would face an AFC division winner from the 2019 season. Which team would be based on the division currently in the rotation, but we know it wouldn't be the AFC East since each of those teams is already on the schedule. That would mean the 17th opponent would have been the Kansas City Chiefs, Baltimore Ravens, or Houston Texans.
Should a 17th game be added to the 2021 regular-season schedule, and assuming San Francisco finishes in last place within the NFC West, the team would face the fourth-place team from either the AFC East, AFC West, or AFC North. Right now, that would be either the New York Jets, Los Angeles Chargers, or Cincinnati Bengals. The 49ers are already slated to face each team from the AFC South.
NFL players provided owners with the option to add a regular-season game to each team's schedule when the league and the NFLPA agreed upon a new Collective Bargaining Agreement in March.
Do the owner votes mean that a 17th game will not be added to the 2021 season? Not necessarily. Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk believes the coronavirus pandemic's financial impact should make it more likely. It would mean increased inventory and an added revenue source next season, which could be how it is marketed to the players with the salary cap expected to see a significant drop in 2021.
"All that said, a league source recently reiterated to PFT that a 17th game is a done deal," wrote Florio. "In the short term, however, the league may try to make it look like something other than a done deal, as part of the broader dance with the NFLPA."
One player who has been vocal in his opposition to adding any games to the NFL schedule is 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman, a member of the NFLPA executive committee.
"It's odd to me, and it's always odd when you hear player safety is their biggest concern, and they're really standing up for player safety," Sherman said in February. "Player safety, player safety. But it seems like player safety has a price tag. Player safety up to the point of, 'Hey, 17 games makes us this much money, so we really don't care how safe they are if you're going to pay us this much money to play another game.'"