Jets will host Dolphins in NFL’s first Black Friday game When the Jets acquired Aaron Rodgers in a trade with the Packers last month, one of the talking points was that the Jets were likely to be playing a lot more nationally televised games this year than they’ve played in recent seasons. On Wednesday, we learned that they’ll be hosting one of the high profile games on this year’s schedule. The NFL is playing a game on Black Friday for the first time this year and it will feature the Jets hosting the Dolphins at MetLife Stadium. The Friday, November 24 game will be played at 3 p.m. ET and it will be streamed on Amazon Prime Video. Rodgers spent some time with the Dolphins during the holiday season in 2022 as well. He led the Packers to a win in Miami on Christmas Day in a game that also saw Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffer a season-ending concussion. PFT
Giants will visit Eagles on Christmas Day The NFL’s Christmas Day slate will feature a matchup of NFC East rivals. Wednesday brought word that the Giants will be in Philadelphia to face the Eagles on Monday, December 25. The Week 16 game will kick off at 4:30 p.m. ET on Fox. There will be two other games on Christmas Day as the NFL holds its first Monday tripleheader. The other games will be announced on Thursday. The Eagles and Giants played three times during the 2022 season. The Eagles won 48-22 at MetLife Stadium in Week 14 and picked up a 22-16 home win to clinch the top seed in the NFC playoffs in Week 18. The final matchup came in the divisional round of the playoffs and the Eagles rolled to a 38-7 win in that matchup. PFT
Chiefs to host Bengals on New Year’s Eve There have been plenty of fireworks between the Bengals and Chiefs in the last couple of seasons and there will be some on tap when they meet in the 2023 regular season. The NFL announced on Wednesday morning that the Bengals will pay a visit to Arrowhead Stadium to face the Chiefs on New Year’s Eve. The game will be televised by CBS and it will take place at 4:25 p.m. ET, so there will be time for people to get home or to parties ahead of the ball dropping at midnight. Recent history says the game has a good chance of being a preview for another, more consequential matchup. The Bengals and Chiefs have tangled in the last two AFC Championship Games and no one would be surprised if Joe Burrow and Patrick Mahomes square off again in this season’s playoffs, although a Bengals win in Week 17 might help their chances of changing the venue to Cincinnati this time around. The Chiefs have now had two of their 17 regular season games announced. They will also face the Dolphins in Germany in Week Nine, so Tyreek Hill won’t be joining Burrow in making a return visit to Arrowhead. PFT
NFL releases full 2023 European schedule The NFL’s entire schedule will be released on Thursday night, but the league’s international games have been announced on Wednesday morning. There will be three games in London and two games in Germany this season. The Jaguars will be the first team to take part in two international games in the same season when they play in London on back-to-back weeks early in the season. Jacksonville will serve as the “home” team in a Week Four game against the Falcons at Wembley Stadium and then they’ll move on to being the “road” team in a matchup of 2022 playoff teams in Week Five. They’ll face the Bills at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Germany will also host a meeting of AFC playoff clubs. Week Nine will bring the Dolphins and Chiefs to Frankfurt with the Chiefs serving as the “home” side. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will be the site of a Ravens-Titans clash in Week Six and the Colts and Patriots will wrap up the league’s European games in Frankfurt in Week 10. PFT
Legendary broadcaster Al Michaels sounds hopeful fans will enjoy NFL "Thursday Night Football" games during the 2023 season more so than they did this past campaign. "The schedule is the issue because teams cannot play more than once on a Thursday night so we had to do every team," Michaels explained during an appearance on "The Michele Tafoya Podcast," as shared by Sean Keeley of Awful Announcing. "And obviously, there was gonna be some games that were good, some games that were not very good, but actually, that happens every Sunday. Now they’re gonna try to, this year, expand it a little bit, maybe have teams play twice on a Thursday night, which helps us, no doubt about it."
The full NFL 2023 season schedule was released on Thursday, including all Thursday night, Sunday night and Monday night primetime games. Most teams have multiple primetime games throughout the season, with even the Jets reaching the maximum of six nationally broadcasted games. However, there were four NFL teams that were notably missing from the primetime spots this year: the Texans, Cardinals, Colts and Falcons. All four teams had some of the worst records in the league last season. SI _______ ________________ Too me, this isnt even close to being fair. Seems rather biased and Id take offense to it if I were one of the 4 teams.
Meh, it could be a blessing in disguise. Getting young teams back on track, it keeps them from having to change their schedules multiple times throughout the year. Some markets also have a hard time filling their stadium on Thursday nights... Nothing worse than a prime time game with 25% of the seats empty. When you are winning, not an issue, when you are rebuilding...
Now that the games are all in order, some teams can rightfully hold a grudge against the schedule makers. The NFL schedule, most of which you’ve known about for months now, has officially been placed in order for you. Thanks to a fleet of corporate sponsors, over-eager TikTokkers and social media gurus, who are free to write checks with their content that players’ bodies will have to cash on Sundays, we now know the exact times and dates of every NFL game. If I sound ornery, it’s because this felt like a particularly vampiric process this year. There are a lot of teams getting a spotlight they don’t deserve and a lot of good teams being built the right way that got absolutely hosed. For the moment, we’re focusing on the latter. Be it burdensome travel, too much British television, multiple games on short rest or, in the Giants’ case, every circle of football hell, it felt like the folks tasked with pacifying network executives went a little overboard in 2023. Here’s hoping it all blows up in their faces. Join us, for a listing of the most screwed teams of the year (so far). 1. New York Giants This schedule is borderline criminal. While the entire theme of this year’s ordering of games was “naked money grab,” forcing one of the NFL’s stalwart franchises—a team coming off a playoff berth with the reigning Coach of the Year on the sideline—to go on the road for seven of the first 10 games is ridiculous. New York is also tied for the most short-rest games out of any team in the NFL, with four according to ESPN analytics, which also noted that the Giants are tied for the most short-rest road games out of any team. I don’t count a single two-game stretch where I’d deem both games obviously winnable, and they are tied for fourth-toughest in strength of schedule. While I can predict that coaches like Brian Daboll and DC Wink Martindale, who have been through the ringer, can use this as a collective battle cry, this is the kind of legitimate screw-job that alters the course of a promising season. Closing the year with the Eagles twice in three weeks, including once on Christmas, is a middle finger at best. What on Earth did the Giants do to deserve this? 2. New York Jets I recognize that the Jets’ schedule is absurd, but one can also understand that they did this to themselves. Unlike the Giants, the Jets went big-game hunting this offseason and acquired one of the most mercurial and fascinating players of the 2000s. Aaron Rodgers is playing for the Jets, which means that six of their games this season (so far) will take place when no other football game is on. While that would be a lot for any franchise, that also means balancing the delicacy of a long, arduous season with a media feeding frenzy. While I predict the Jets will be one of the best teams in the NFL this season—certainly good enough to upend the Bills and win the AFC East—one has to consider the possibility that their experiment will slide off the rails and they must mask palace intrigue over the course of a long year under the spotlight. Opening up with the Bills; traveling to Dallas for the Cowboys’ home opener; facing their biggest foil, the Patriots; before hosting the Chiefs in another prime-time game is an especially wicked way to start the season. The Jets also close the season on the road against the Browns before another date with New England. 3. Seattle Seahawks The Seahawks are, once again, your United MileagePlus award winners for most miles traveled. Although, this year, they are traveling 2,000 more miles than in 2022, when they made a road trip to Germany. I think the back end of Seattle’s schedule is also particularly notable in its brutality. From Nov. 23 on, the team faces the 49ers, Cowboys, 49ers again and Eagles, before getting what you might perceive as a break with the Steelers and Titans. However, the Titans game is in Tennessee at 10 a.m. Pacific time, which is never a fun time to try to tackle Derrick Henry. Both the Titans and Steelers present a physical brand of football that no team wants to welcome at the end of a year when they’re inevitably reeling from injuries and fatigue. 4. San Francisco 49ers The 49ers, according to ESPN analytics, are tied for the most games this season against clubs coming off a bye week. Per the same metrics, they own the worst rest differential in the NFL on a game-by-game basis. In addition, they are also the second-most traveled team in the NFL, behind Seattle. While I do think Kyle Shanahan is good enough to fend off a stat that is more problematic for younger coaches prone to self-scouting errors, it’s still a quirk that plays against a team that may be cycling quarterbacks as a strategic advantage (or needing to switch quarterbacks mid-stream) as their opponent will have ample time to prepare for multiple passers. The 49ers also have five prime-time games this season, which is tied for the second-most in the NFL. To be clear, I expect the 49ers to rip through this schedule. They have a middle-of-the-road strength of schedule and finish the season with the Commanders and Rams, neither team which I’d expect to be in contention. Their “big” game of the year, on Dec. 3 against the Eagles, is also nicely padded with a long-rest game beforehand and a comfortable-rest game against the Cardinals on the back end. 5. Indianapolis Colts, Houston Texans and Atlanta Falcons I’m sorry, but how does a team like the Browns, a club the NFL was actively burying at 1 p.m. every Sunday last year to avoid talking about the circumstances through which they improved as a club, have double the number of prime-time games as a team with Shane Steichen and Anthony Richardson (the Colts), a team with DeMeco Ryans and C.J. Stroud (the Texans) and a team with Bijan Robinson, Kyle Pitts and Drake London (the Falcons). Similarly, we’ll only see Bryce Young, the No. 1 pick in the draft, twice in prime-time windows. That is the same number as Baker Mayfield and the lifeless, half-tanking Buccaneers. This is a perfect encapsulation and misunderstanding of what audiences might actually be interested in. 6. Jacksonville Jaguars If I were the Jaguars, I’d never want to be the first team to try anything in the middle of an NFL season. While playing back-to-back London games seems fine, in theory, given they will be spending two weeks in England and will possibly hold a powerful advantage over a jet-lagged Bills squad … their second opponent in the U.K. swing is still the Buffalo Bills. Jacksonville is expected to rise to a tier just below elite this season, which means competing against the Bills should not be as daunting a prospect as it once was. Still, playing Josh Allen while still possibly time-zone delirious, and then not receiving your bye week for almost a full month after returning home feels a bit over the top. All this to entertain a country the NFL is ready to leave for Germany, anyway. SI - Conner Orr
"And Friday everyone is going to be bitching about how the schedule is so unfair to their team!! " ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Did I nail it or not??
I personally dont hold much stock in scheduling. If you are a Playoff caliber team, you'll find a way to get 'er done. In order to be the best, you have to beat the best.
