What the 17 game schedule means for the Miami Dolphins
By Brian Miller
The NFL has officially announced that the league will begin playing a 17 game schedule as early as 2021. What does that mean for the Miami Dolphins?
For starters, the Dolphins will now host an extra game in 2021. Miami will play at Hard Rock Stadium, at a date to be announced later, against the New York Giants. Miami will rotate home and away games each year. Next year they will play on the road at one of the NFC East team’s home sites.
Each AFC East team will host a game this year and travel in 2022.
In addition, each NFL team will now play at least one game overseas every eight years. Last year the Dolphins were supposed to play in the United Kingdom but that game was canceled due to COVID-19. There have been no announcements on whether or not there will be games played outside the U.S. this year.
With the 17 game schedule now a reality, the NFL has eliminated one pre-season game. Only the teams playing in the Hall of Fame game will now play four exhibition games. In addition, the NFL will continue the one bye-week in the post-season and teams will play three Wild Card games in each conference.
Miami will now also see it that much harder for a team to complete a perfect season. With one extra game in the regular season, teams would need to finish the season a perfect 20-0 which is near impossible in this modern era of football.
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Schedule changes will also mean that NFL records will inevitably fall. Most notably the march towards Don Shula’s winning record total will be a little easier to reach. Shula has a 48 game lead over Bill Belichick. If Belichick can win 11 games each year including playoffs, he would need 4.3 years to catch Shula.
While that is what Miami fans will watch closely, league player records will start to fall as well. Single season rushing and receiving records will start to fall and so on.
The good news is that football fans will get an extra week of meaningful football and with new television deals in place, fans will have more opportunities to see the games they want. One of the newer rule changes will allow games to be flexed to Monday Night Football instead of just Sunday nights.
Next is when can we expect the actual schedule? Traditionally it has been released around the time of the draft but this year may take a little longer.