THE BALANCING ACT OF THE NFL SCHEDULE

By STEVE KING

The NFL schedule has been like a teeter-totter through the years.
That is, when regular-season games have been added, preseason games have been reduced, and that’s happening again as the league has announced that a regular-season game is being added beginning in 2021, bringing the total to 17, while the number of preseason games has been cut by one to three.
It just makes sense. After all, when it comes to total games — regular season and preseason games combined — you can’t have too many, right?
When the Browns entered the NFL in 1955, they played 12 regular-season games and almost half of that — five — in the preseason, or, as they called it then, the exhibition season. As the regular-season games remained at 12 through 1960, the number of Browns preseason games fluctuated mostly between five and six with two exceptions, when there were four in 1952 and seven — yikes! — in 1956.
With the switch to 14 regular-season games in 1961, the number of Browns preseason contests was five through 1964, and again in 1966 and ’68, with six in 1965, ’67 and 1969-77.
When the regular-season schedule was upped to 16 games in 1978, the preseason slate was downsized to four contests all the way through 2019, except for 1989, ’90 and ’99, when it was bumped up to five, and 2020, when there were no games at all because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Eventually, the number of regular-season games will almost certainly be increased by one to 18, and the preseason schedule correspondingly will then be decreased by one to two. That makes a lot of sense. The league needs 18 regular-season games and only two contests in the preseason. The rest of the preseason can consist of at least one set of combined practices with another team. Coaches love the work that comes from that, and because it’s controlled, it’s safer than preseason games.
By the way, just for the sake of comparison, from 1946, when they were born, through 1948, the Browns played 14 regular-season games in the All-America Football Conference. In the league’s last year of 1949, that number was decreased to 12. At the same time, the Browns played one preseason game in both 1946 and ’47, two in 1948 and three in 1949.