Peter King: Chiefs have requested not to play the Bears in Germany

[FloridaMan88]

And other 2023 schedule information…

Link: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...ia/?cid=fmiatw

Not so fast on the reports of Kansas City dominating the Germany games in 2023 and 2024. Kansas City is playing a November game in Frankfurt this year; that’s a fact. The German newspaper Bild reported KC would play Chicago in the Germany game, and that KC would play again in Germany in 2024 when Carolina is due to host a game there. Bild reported Carolina’s 2024 foe would be Kansas City. I’ve been told there’s some doubt on both of those reports. First: When a team gives up one of its home games to play overseas, it has the option of requesting to the league one home game on its schedule the team does not want moved. I’m told Kansas City requested that the Chicago game not be played overseas. As for 2024, it’s hard to imagine Carolina would not try to keep Patrick Mahomes’ only currently scheduled game in Charlotte for the next eight years at Bank of America Stadium. You might ask, Wouldn’t Kansas City want to protect red-hot home games against Buffalo, Cincinnati and Philadelphia from moving to Germany? The league would almost certainly not schedule those games for overseas, because Germany games are played in the 9:30 a.m. ET window, which is not nearly as conducive to big ratings as are Sunday late-afternoon or primetime games.

The release of the schedule, which the NFL had hoped to have for a primetime show Thursday night, may be delayed. It’s still likely to be done in time for release Thursday at 8 p.m., but I was told over the weekend it may not be finished in time. The 2023 mega-games—opening Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights, Thanksgiving Day, the new Black Friday tilt, the Sunday night game on Christmas Eve and the Monday tripleheader on Christmas—are not set in stone yet. The mega-games are usually solid by early May. The schedule crew is slated to meet with commissioner Roger Goodell this afternoon in New York, at which time more clarity on the tentpole games is expected. I’m told as of the weekend the NFL was still in search of options on the 272-game regular season slate, with a series of computers continuing to spit out alternatives.

The resolution of the Aaron Rodgers and Lamar Jackson situations allows the NFL to move forward with the Jets to be a heavy primetime team and the Ravens to be more attractive for night games too. I’d previously reported the Jets, who had one primetime game last year without Rodgers, would likely have 11 or 12 primetime/Sunday doubleheader games this year with Rodgers. Each team can be scheduled for six primetime regular-season games, with the league option of flexing that team into a seventh, and then regardless of primetime appearances, any team can be scheduled on Sunday night in week 18. Expect the Jets to have five or six primetime games and at least four or five doubleheader games. Baltimore may not be in prime time as much as the Jets, but the Ravens should expect multiple primetime games as well.

I would not expect every team to have a Thursday night game on Amazon this year. The league traditionally has made Thursday night the receptacle for bad teams once a year to play in prime time. But now that the league passed a rule in March allowing teams to play short-week Thursday games twice instead of once, that could empower the league to eliminate some of the teams that look like bad ones from prime time in favor of maxing out some teams with two Thursday games. So Arizona might be left out this year, and maybe Tampa Bay or Houston. Stronger teams could find two Amazon games on the schedule, which would serve two purposes—strengthening a streaming schedule the NFL badly wants to work for Amazon, and giving good but not great teams with major national followings (Pittsburgh or Green Bay or New England, perhaps, this year) another primetime appearance.

One thing making schedule construction tougher this year: the elimination of the road team determining the televising network for Sunday day games. With few exceptions, the road team for Sunday afternoon games has dictated where it would go on TV. In a game with an NFC road team, FOX would televise. For a game with an AFC road team, CBS would do it. Now, every Sunday afternoon game is a free agent, which expands the possibilities for the schedule. You can be sure CBS will be fighting for as many Kansas City games in the late-afternoon doubleheader slot, and I won’t be surprised if CBS gets every Mahomes doubleheader game this year. With the AFC so much stronger (particularly in franchise quarterbacks), don’t be surprised to see FOX get a couple of roadies with Cincinnati or Buffalo or Baltimore or maybe even the Jets.

[CatfishBob2]

Originally Posted by Gary Cooper

So you never saw Brady play there over the last three seasons?

Please, Brady can't hold Mason Rudolph's jock strap

[CapsLockKey]

Originally Posted by KCChiefsFan88

Maybe the Chiefs don’t want to give up a home game vs Chicago because that game is a big draw in terms of ticket sales, premium suites/event space sales, etc.?



Chicago has a big fanbase, relatively close proximity to KC, they only play at Arrowhead once every eight years, etc.



Seems like there has to be a business decision behind why the Chiefs don’t want to give up a game at Arrowhead vs the Bears.

Most likely this is the reason. It's about the money and revenue to local economy. Bears fans travel well, especially since there are a lot of them scattered throughout the Midwest making it a drivable destination. I'm guessing they would much rather give up the Detroit or Miami game.

[wazu]

Originally Posted by CapsLockKey

Most likely this is the reason. It's about the money and revenue to local economy. Bears fans travel well, especially since there are a lot of them scattered throughout the Midwest making it a drivable destination. I'm guessing they would much rather give up the Detroit or Miami game.

Can't give up the return of Tyreek.

[dlphg9]

People have hated Thursday night games basically since they've become a thing and it's usually a shitty game. So what did the NFL do? Remove the 1 game limit to force a couple of good teams to play multiple Thursday night games.

They aren't going to stop with anything that they will make money, so just prepare yourself for more Europe games and just wait until KC has a home and away Europe game in a few years. NFL is all about making money and they don't give a shit about anything else.

[TLO]

Pro tip: Read the article in the OP before posting

[Talisman]

But those Amazon games do look pretty. I could tell the jump in quality when I hit that part of Clay's opus.

[ChiefBlueCFC]

Chicago or Detroit are the only ones that really make sense to me, and we played the Lions in London already so that would make me think it would be Chicago. Can’t see a division game since it would be about 6 am on west coast for the game, and as mentioned the NFL wouldn’t want one of the premier games of the entire season to be played in the morning.

[SithCeNtZ]

Originally Posted by CapsLockKey

Most likely this is the reason. It's about the money and revenue to local economy. Bears fans travel well, especially since there are a lot of them scattered throughout the Midwest making it a drivable destination. I'm guessing they would much rather give up the Detroit or Miami game.

I disagree. This sounds like the Chiefs are trying to control their schedule to some degree. We all saw last year what happened when the chiefs played a national game basically every week, and there isn't any reason to think it won't be like that next year but worse because we don't have the crappy AFC south.

Every year after schedules come out there are articles on which teams got "screwed" and have short turn arounds and have to travel. So play MNF then on the road for an early Sunday while the opponent is coming off a bye for example. It's an advantage to have more rest and time to game plan. Well, if the Chiefs are always playing Thursday/late window Sunday/SNF/MNF it increases the odds the chiefs will be "screwed" and have these kinds of short turn arounds. They don't want to lose the Bears game because it's the only game you can say with 100% certainty that will be a 1 pm EST standard start time, ensuring at least one week where we will have a good chance to be neutral/have an advantage on rest compared to our opponent. In an ideal world I think the chiefs would love to play the bears then have Buffalo or Cincy in town the following weekend after they get done playing a primetime game of their own. Whoever we play in Germany will have to travel far and deal with all of those annoyances too, this limiting the effect of someone else having far more rest than us.

[|Zach|]

I remember reading a lot of stuff indicating we were going to play the Lions there before all the stuff about us playing the Bears.

I really don't think an AFC West opponent will be the overseas games.

[|Zach|]

Does another team's popularity matter that much revenue wise when you have a home team that is as popular as the Chiefs?

[Bob Dole]

What time do you have to get up to make a 7:30am kickoff?

[TwistedChief]

Originally Posted by Bob Dole

What time do you have to get up to make a 7:30am kickoff?

You do realize that they’d likely travel over there on Monday or Tuesday and have plenty of time to acclimate to the time change such that it would seem to them like they’re waking up for a 1pm kickoff by gameday? And also that the opposing team would be subjected to the same time change?

[Bob Dole]

Originally Posted by TwistedChief

You do realize that they’d likely travel over there on Monday or Tuesday and have plenty of time to acclimate to the time change such that it would seem to them like they’re waking up for a 1pm kickoff by gameday? And also that the opposing team would be subjected to the same time change?

I wasn't suggesting it was advantage. Both teams are in the same time zone.

And I know I would still not be 100% acclimated even with a full week.

[displacedinMN]

The Mahomes Effect.

[dlphg9]

Originally Posted by Bob Dole

I wasn't suggesting it was advantage. Both teams are in the same time zone.

And I know I would still not be 100% acclimated even with a full week.

Dude youre like 175 years old, so I'd say that you would take a bit longer to acclimate than a 20-30 year old.