[FloridaMan88]

Peter King:

Link: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...-fmia-week-17/

The Week 18 schedule. The NFL schedule called for two games on Saturday and 14 on Sunday of Week 18. The league announced at 11:30 ET Sunday night the two ESPN/ABC games for Saturday: Kansas City at Las Vegas, 4:30 p.m. ET, followed by Tennessee at Jacksonville at 8:15 p.m., for the AFC South championship.

Don’t miss the significance here. The NFL traditionally scheduled a division title game in the final week, if one is available, in the final time slot of the regular season on Sunday night on NBC. But the NFL clearly sees the weirdness of this year’s division title game. Tennessee is on a six-game losing streak and could be playing a third-string quarterback at a red-hot team that’s won four straight with a quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, who’s on fire. Not exactly the game you want to showcase in the final primetime window of the regular year.

You might ask, Why KC-Vegas for the first game? Three reasons: Kansas City (13-3) needs to win to stay in play for the AFC’s top seed, Patrick Mahomes is always a ratings draw, and the Raiders (6-10), though eliminated from the playoffs, showed off an incredible performance by Jarrett Stidham in his first NFL start Sunday. The game should get a good rating.

Game 272. Although I’d make the argument that Detroit-Green Bay is far and away the best candidate for the Sunday night finale, the NFL may wait till the conclusion of Bills-Bengals to set the Sunday schedule. After Baltimore (10-6) lost to Pittsburgh Sunday night, it would take a Cincinnati (11-4) loss tonight for the Ravens-at-Bengals game next Sunday to be for the AFC North crown. The problem in that scenario is that both teams are already in the playoffs, so the game would be played only for playoff seeding.

My gut feeling is the NFL will still play Rodgers in primetime in a win-and-in Sunday game. Why wouldn’t the league do that? If the Seahawks beat the Rams in Seattle next weekend, Detroit would be eliminated. I would maintain Rodgers playing to put Green Bay in the playoffs is the single biggest story of Week 18, and Dan Campbell’s kneecap-biters would not lay down even if they’d been eliminated a half-hour before the game. It’s the most intriguing competitive game of the weekend.