Expect ever-evolving NFL to make many changes for next season

Confetti falls on Super Bowl LIX MVP Jalen Hurts, center, and the Eagles after their win over the Chiefs.

Staff Writer

Feb. 12, 2025 11:31 AM PT

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Roger Goodell is always looking for a new way to shake up the status quo.

That doesn’t mean making changes for the sake of making changes, but the NFL commissioner encourages alterations that push the envelope. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.

Put the draft in prime time, and move it from city to city…

Allow choreographed touchdown/turnover celebrations, speed up pace of play, move back PAT kicks…

Shrink the preseason and expand the regular season…

Change kickoffs, dramatically expand the international schedule, play games on Black Friday, Christmas Day and the first Friday of the season…

Goodell’s philosophy is that success inhibits innovation. He doesn’t want to hear, “This is how we’ve always done it,” or, “What did we do on that day last season? Let’s do it again.”

So, on the heels of Philadelphia’s Super Bowl victory, and as the league heads into another offseason, it’s safe to say more changes are afoot, even if they have yet to fully take shape.

First, the changes that are built into the game, the reshuffling of rosters. Among the star players who almost certainly will be changing teams are All-Pro receiver Cooper Kupp — the Rams have been looking for a trade partner — defensive end Myles Garrett of the Cleveland Browns, and quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers of the New York Jets, Sam Darnold of the Minnesota Vikings and Kirk Cousins of the Atlanta Falcons.

What other changes could be in store?

The Pittsburgh Steelers will play host to a game in Dublin, which is fitting considering the late Dan Rooney, the longtime team president and owner, was a former U.S. ambassador to Ireland.

The Indianapolis Colts will play in Berlin and the Miami Dolphins are headed to Madrid. Expected to be announced is a second consecutive game in Sao Paulo, likely another Friday game after the Thursday Kickoff Opener.

The Eagles' Saquon Barkley celebrates his touchdown against the Packers in their season opener in Brazil last fall.

The Eagles were the home team for an opener in Sao Paulo last fall, and look how their season finished. And remember the 2007 New York Giants, the ones who stunned the then-undefeated New England Patriots in the Super Bowl? They played a London game that season.

International games are no longer viewed as exotic or disruptive. The NFL ultimately could wind up playing a full slate of 17 games beyond the U.S. borders, a globe-trotting barnstorming tour possibly instead of a fixed international franchise. We already know the Rams will be playing a 2026 game in Melbourne almost certainly as a season opener.

Another Mexico City game is in the works, but there are stadium issues that need to be resolved.

It used to be that the NFL would never have teams play multiple short weeks in a season — a club playing a Monday game followed by a Sunday game, more than once per year. Now, it happens all the time. Watch for one or more teams to play three games in 11 days — Monday, Sunday then Thursday.

The Baltimore Ravens played three games in 11 days last season — Sunday, Saturday, Wednesday — and went 3-0.

In terms of scheduling, remember that now every game is a “free agent,” meaning the visiting team doesn’t determine the network, as it did forever in the NFL.

For instance, think back to those years when Tom Brady versus Peyton Manning was the “best” game of the regular season. That alternated back and forth between CBS and NBC. Now many people consider that game to be Patrick Mahomes vs. Josh Allen. It’s eligible for Fox, too. The NFL also has put some big games on ESPN and it’s continuing to grow Amazon Prime as an showcase as well, so don’t be shocked if one of those huge games winds up on a streaming platform.

The NFL won’t be going to an 18-game schedule in 2025. That will require a lot of negotiations between the league and the NFL Players Assn., but the concept will percolate throughout the season as will a further reduction of the preseason, probably landing on 18 regular-season games and two weeks of preseason games.

Officiating was under particular scrutiny this season, with a widely pervasive feeling that the Kansas City Chiefs, who won every close game in 2024, seemed to get all the breaks from the team in stripes. Watch for the league to expand the list of reviewable plays, possibly to include facemask calls or non-calls.

“This game has gotten so much faster,” Goodell said in his annual Super Bowl news conference. “You’re seeing so much that you didn’t even six years ago. I challenge all of you — go back and look at an NFL game from 2000 — the quality of what you see, the cameras, the angles, the number of cameras, you see an awful lot more.

“So we want to use technology to supplement and to assist and support the officials getting it right. Replay assists this year, I think, was a big step forward for us. I see in the future us adding more plays, and we’ll look at that with the competition committee.”

The new kickoff format was adopted on a one-year basis, and the likelihood is that will be made permanent this spring. There could be some tweaks, though, such as moving touchbacks from the 30-yard line to the 35.

The league liked the numbers it saw out of the so-called dynamic kickoffs, including returns increasing 57% from 2023. Even with 332 plays added back into the game, the league said, there were fewer injuries on kickoffs than incurred the previous season with the traditional format.

Look for the league to make permanent the concept of flexing games into the Thursday Night Football window. The NFL did that once in two years — Denver at the Chargers in Week 16 last season — and was happy with the results. The process wasn’t as disruptive as many people had feared. Still, those types of scheduling adjustments figure to be rare.

NFL games on Christmas Day, streamed on Netflix, were a big hit last season. Watch for the league to do that again, as Christmas falls on a Thursday, and to expand the Dec. 25 schedule from two games to three, matching Thanksgiving Day.

Green Bay will play host to the draft this year, a major event for that city, which doesn’t have the hotels (or weather) to play host to a Super Bowl. Some of Lambeau Field will be used for the draft, as will the surrounding tailgating areas.

The following year, the draft will be in Pittsburgh, another historic NFL city that’s unlikely to get a Super Bowl but that the league feels is deserving of a major event.