18 games? Why not 22? Why not 30?

The NFL met yesterday to discuss a potential expansion of the regular season, from 16 games to 18 games. Doing that will either subtract 2 pre-season games or it will add two more games to the regular season. If it does get approved, one thing the NFL could do, is reduce the amount of pre-season games. Doing that would alleviate some of the problems surrounding the situation with having more games and with the pre-season structure. If the pre-season were shortened to 2 or 3 games, teams could then avoid some potential injuries and season ticket holders wouldn't feel so bad when they saw the bill for their Personal Seat Licensing charges for their season tickets.  Ticket prices are unfortunately the same for regular season and pre-season, which begs the question, why should season ticket holders be charged that much to see pre-season games featuring 2nd and 3rd string players who most likely won't make the final roster? Injuries are always a problem and lots of times key players go down in a pre-season game that doesn't count, so if you reduce the number games, you reduce the chance of injury during a meaningless game. This all supports reducing the number of pre-season games, it doesn't however support adding 2 more to the regular season. If the NFL decided to just add the games on, bringing the total of games purchased for a season to 22, then some people would end up being priced out for the whole season. Adding more games also puts the players at risk of getting fatigued, hurt and if they end up in the playoffs, payroll will go up as well.