Despite the NFL owning a 10% stake in ESPN, a longtime voice at the network still isn’t shying away from criticizing Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league alike. While the NFL continues to stress that player safety is its top priority, growing momentum around a potential 18-game season contradicts it all. That disconnect came into focus when Michael Wilbon, speaking on First Take – and known for Pardon the Interruption – had some pointed words for the league.

“No league lies publicly like the NFL,” he said. “No entity in this country lies as thoroughly, as convincingly, and as successfully as the NFL to try to sell, ‘We care about health and player safety.’ They do not … It’s a lie. It’s a fraud. It’s the NFL, and people aren’t going to call them out on it. Usually, people just want their football, and whatever the NFL is selling, we as a culture will buy it.”

Although he remains the NFL’s indirect employee after his three-year contract extension with ESPN in September 2025, Michael Wilbon didn’t spare the league. He discussed how the NFL’s top brass often ignores players’ health. These concerns stem from an 18-game season after moving to a 17-game year in 2021.

The then-NFLPA executive director, Lloyd Howell, revealed that players told him none of them were in favor of an 18-game season, despite the league and team personnel’s stance on the issue.

“Their side hasn’t raised it; we certainly haven’t raised it. . . . Any commentary outside of a formal negotiation is just commentary,” Howell said, as per Pro Football Talk. “It’s a player’s decision as to what they will agree to do or not. Right now, when I have talked to players over the last two seasons, no one wants to play an 18th game. No one. 17 games, for many of the guys, is too long.”

Despite these concerns from the players, the discussion about a longer season has continued, with Roger Goodell himself addressing the issue at Super Bowl LXI. Goodell shared how a change in the regular season is not a given and that negotiations haven’t even begun with the players’ union, but he hasn’t closed the door on it yet.

Hence, Wilbon wants the league to drop the pretense and acknowledge the fact that player safety, while important, isn’t its primary concern.

“Don’t ever say to my face if you’re an NFL executive or a club executive, ‘Oh, we care about health and player safety. You do not,” Wilbon said. “Just be honest about it. I had a journalism professor who said, ‘Say what you mean and mean what you say.’ The NFL doesn’t care about player safety.”

As the ESPN veteran continues to raise his voice against the NFL exploiting its players for money with talks about a longer season, he has found support in a Cincinnati Bengals quarterback, who has also expressed his criticism regarding the longer season and its adverse effects on the players.

Bengals quarterback raises concern about the NFL extending to an 18-game season

After playing in 209 games across 18 years in the league, the Cincinnati Bengals’ backup signal caller, Joe Flacco, has called out the NFL for its stance on an 18-game season in the future.

Flacco addressed how the constant desire for more money will hurt the players and the product on the field before talking about the 16-game season being the perfect formula for the league.

“Ultimately, it seems like we’re going to go there and we’re going to be able to do it,” Flacco said. “As a player, I loved playing 16 games, and I think the NFL had an awesome formula for 16 games and four rounds of playoffs, and it was super competitive.”

“I don’t think people realize that when you put guys through an 18-game regular-season schedule, I think what could happen is the playoffs start to suffer,” he added. “Teams are so beat up by that point in the year that they’re not at their best, so instead of getting top-level football, you’re getting a couple of teams going against each other at 75 percent.”

Both Michael Wilbon and Joe Flacco have a simple argument that the NFL’s push for an 18-game season reveals that profit comes before player safety. Until the league is honest about its priorities, the gap between what it says and what it does will only grow wider.