Eagles defensive end Robert Quinn could play 18 games this season, thanks to getting traded from the Bears to the Eagles after the Eagles’ bye, but before the Bears’ bye. Quinn isn’t thrilled about that possibility.
“That’s not really a record I’m looking for ― 18 games and no bye week,” Quinn said, via Martin Frank of the Delaware News Journal. “Come on, man. You can borrow my pads if you want to do that. I mean, 18 weeks, no bye week, Year 12. It’s a heck of an adjustment, and in a new city.”
Playing 18 games in one season was impossible for most of NFL season, but it wouldn’t actually be an NFL record. The NFL record for games played in a season is 19, set by four players on the Frankford Yellow Jackets in the 1920s, when teams could set their own schedules and Frankford typically played more games than the rest of the league.
When the NFL played 16 games over 17 weeks, several players played in 17 games in a season, including Emmanuel Sanders with the Broncos and 49ers in 2019 and Jerry Rice with the Raiders and Seahawks in 2004. No player has played 18 games in a season since 1930, but Quinn -- along with Dean Marlowe, who was traded from Atlanta to Buffalo -- has a chance to do it this year.