The NFL wants to add an 18th regular-season game to its schedule, and Buffalo Bills star Dion Dawkins thinks it's only a matter of time until it happens.
Dion Dawkins knows it's only a matter of time before the NFL goes to an 18-game regular season.
In a recent interview with Fox News Digital, the star left tackle for the Buffalo Bills spoke about the idea and why he feels it's all but certain to happen.
"We're a part of that world where people want to see football more — they want to see it," he said. "So, the 18th game is a beautiful business choice as the league."
But just because it's, as Dawkins put it, a "beautiful business choice" for the NFL, that doesn't mean it's the best choice, especially for players. Dawkins believes that if the league were to move forward with an 18-game regular season, it would have to take the players' thoughts and feelings into consideration.
He mentions the fact that NFL careers are "only getting shorter". While one game isn't going to make it "drastically shorter", as he put it, it can start to add up where your body breaks down.
If that happens, what he'd like to see is players being taken care of more than they are now.
"Our contracts aren't fully guaranteed," he said, adding that he'd like to see teams give players a game off here and there to manage workload if it happens. "There's good players, there's average players, there's players that are just making it by. As long as guys are taken care of the way they're supposed to, this is our life.
Dawkins said that he understands that an 18th game is going to happen "either way". But he doesn't see it stopping there. He feels like once they hit 18, the league will eventually look at making the regular season 19 or even 20 games down the line.
"And then 20 years later, guess what? We're talking about a 19th, then we'll be talking about a 20th," he said. "…Then it's like, 'Yeah, we are combat athletes all year long.' But who knows?"
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