Cowboys' Jerry Jones Thinks NFL Owners Will Approve Adding 17th Game to Schedule

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones believes a 17-game regular season will be approved by the NFL ahead of the 2021 campaign.

When asked if he thought it would be approved during an appearance on 105.3 The Fan, Jones said: "I do. My personal opinion is that it will. Now, we didn't agree to it the other day at our meeting. But we've agreed to look at it and do it. We got it in our [new] collective bargaining agreement [to do it]."

During a virtual NFL owners meeting on Wednesday, the owners delayed making a final decision on whether the regular-season slate will go from 16 to 17 games next season.

Jones explained that the 17th game was not approved Wednesday because the owners have plenty of time to make that decision:

"[We] didn't need to. We've got several meetings ahead in the offseason, and it just wasn't something we had to address. We wanted [everyone] to think about it more, and to think about if there are any nuances we could add to it. You'd be surprised [what you could come up with] when you invite the prospective from 32 teams."

While discussing what adding a 17th regular-season game would entail, Jones noted that the plan would be to cut preseason games from four to three.

Also, to keep things fair on a year-to-year basis, a team that plays nine home games and eight road games next season would play eight home games and nine road games the following season. All 32 NFL teams would rotate in that regard.

The 16-game season has been in place since 1978, but with the league experimenting more and more in recent years, a change appears to be on the horizon.

This season, the NFL expanded from six playoff teams per conference to seven. The NFL had gone with six playoff teams in each conference for 30 years previously, as it was first instituted in 1990.

The playoff expansion was officially approved earlier this year on March 31, and if a similar timeline exists for expanding the regular season, the owners have more than three months to work out the particulars.

Since the NFL and NFLPA already agreed to have the addition of a 17th regular-season game beginning in 2021 at the earliest added to the collective bargaining agreement, the only thing missing is a final stamp of approval from the owners.