We have survived the NFL’s annual schedule release extravaganza, and for 2024, it comes with a to-do list. First, scroll through your favorite release videos on social media and save official lock screen graphics for your iPhone as soon as you can to make the next 10 weeks go by that much faster. Next, steel yourself for the Aaron Rodgers Content Machine—the endless appearances on The Pat McAfee Show and any number of podcasts, and also the Jets’ seven (!!!) stand-alone games on the 2024 schedule. (He’ll make his return from last season’s Achilles tendon injury on Monday Night Football in Week 1. What could possibly go wrong?!) And don’t forget to subscribe to Netflix and Amazon and Peacock and ESPN+ and Hinge (they don’t have a game, yet, but you’ll need it when your partner leaves you for spending all that money on streaming services and ditching them to watch football on all of the major holidays) before it’s too late. And check out the five biggest takeaways from the schedule release below:
The NFL’s Heat Checks Are Only Going to Get Deeper
When Stephen Curry shoots a deep 3, no one bats an eye. He’s the best 3-point shooter in NBA history and one of the most prolific deep 3-point shooters of all time. Make or miss, it’s a good shot regardless of where he lets go of the ball. The NFL isn’t any different with its push deeper and deeper into its fan base’s pockets. Roger Goodell just keeps shooting.
After finalizing a three-year contract with Netflix to air Christmas Day games, the NFL has officially splintered its game programming to six major broadcast destinations. Fans will need a major cable or streaming provider to watch local games on CBS, Fox, ESPN, and NBC. Fans will need additional subscriptions to watch NFL RedZone and/or out-of-market games weekly. They will also need Peacock for the Week 1 game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers, Amazon Prime Video for Thursday Night Football broadcasts throughout the regular season, ESPN+ for a handful of games spread across the season, and, of course, Netflix now for two games—Chiefs at Steelers and Ravens at Texans—on Christmas, which falls on a Wednesday this year. The NFL wants every dollar you have to spend on broadcasts (and every minute you have to spend with your family given the holiday slate), and they know you’ll give it to them. (True Boy Math is calculating just how much money you’ll have to spend to watch every NFL game this season knowing that the final price point doesn’t matter at all.)
Of course, the immediate reaction to all of this will be that this shit sucks. Paying more money for things sucks. The internet, for a lot of reasons, sucks. But don’t forget 93 of the 100 most watched broadcasts in the U.S. last year were NFL games. Three of the seven non-NFL games in the top 100 were college football games, and one of the seven was a show called Tracker, which aired on CBS immediately following the Super Bowl. The NBA and MLB average fewer than 2 million viewers per game; more than twice as many viewers got up early to watch the Ravens as an eight-point favorite take on the Titans in a Week 6 game in London last season. Upping prices and enabling a billion-dollar bidding war with broadcast partners and streamers are direct by-products of the NFL’s unwavering support and interest; stop being surprised when they cast a shot from the Netflix logo at half court.
The Week 1 Slate Is Fun
Two stand-alone games to start the season are a treat. Rather than having just one debut matchup on Thursday night to kick off the season, the NFL is first giving fans Ravens at Chiefs, a rematch of last season’s AFC championship game (and a rematch of Justin Tucker vs. Patrick Mahomes) on Thursday, and then Packers-Eagles from São Paulo, Brazil, on Friday night. It will be the first of eight national games for the Chiefs this season. (Surely the NFL is hoping Taylor Swift will find time around her Eras Tour dates to show up and juice the ratings for those games.)
The Friday game—the NFL’s first in Brazil—won’t kick off until 8:15 p.m. ET, but it will be worth staying up late for. A strong Jordan Love performance for the Packers coupled with any signs of disaster in Philadelphia in the first game of the post–Jason Kelce era would provide quite the narrative coming out of opening weekend.
The two prime-time games on the back end of Week 1 are quite special as well. First, there’s a rematch of last year’s NFC divisional-round matchup between the Rams and Lions, with now highly paid QB Jared Goff going toe-to-toe with Matthew Stafford on Sunday Night Football. Then we’ll have the most nerve-racking first four plays of any Monday Night Football game ever when Rodgers and the Jets face the 49ers to close out the week. If Rodgers finishes that game with his Achilles tendons intact and it saves us from more two-hour Tucker Carlson podcast guest appearances, we all win.
The middle heft of the Week 1 slate isn’t a letdown, either. An eight-game early window on Sunday and a four-game late window should make for a phenomenal multi-view experience on YouTube TV all day. The late afternoon window—with Raiders at Chargers, Broncos at Seahawks, Cowboys at Browns, and Commanders at Buccaneers—has plenty of story lines. It’ll be our first glimpse of Jim Harbaugh’s Chargers and Jayden Daniels’s Commanders. We’ll also get a cheeky look at Broncos rookie quarterback Bo Nix against new Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald and a strong matchup between two potential playoff teams in the Browns and Cowboys, with recent roast victim Tom Brady making his first regular-season call for Fox. If you can’t get up for those narratives in Week 1, you just don’t love ball.
All Holidays Are Football Days Now
The NFL is airing one game on Halloween, three games on Thanksgiving, one on Black Friday, and two on Christmas across various TV and streaming platforms. If the rest of your family hates football, I’m sorry.
All of the holiday games are initially appealing. Texans at Jets on Halloween could have playoff ramifications in the AFC, assuming both C.J. Stroud and Rodgers are healthy and playing up to expectations by midseason. The three Thanksgiving games look promising, too. Caleb Williams makes the Bears must-watch TV week in and week out. Giants at Cowboys is a great spot for a midday nap regardless of who is starting at quarterback for New York by then. And it’s certainly possible the nightcap will be a high-scoring shoot-out between Love’s Packers and Tua Tagovailoa’s Dolphins.
Avid Black Friday shoppers might prefer to skip Raiders at Chiefs, but it’ll be hard not to at least have the game pulled up on your phone after Las Vegas upset Kansas City on Christmas last season. And both of the Christmas Day games—Ravens at Texans and Chiefs at Steelers—offer enough intrigue to delay dinner a bit, too. Three, if not all four, of those teams should be vying for spots in the AFC playoffs, and each has a quarterback situation worth watching.
The Chargers Still Own the NFL’s Schedule Release War
In the least surprising development of schedule release day, the Chargers social media team put out the best video in the league again. Their anime-inspired videos in 2022 and 2023 were fan favorites across the NFL, and this year’s pivot to the Sims world was no different.
The fact that the Chargers have committed to detailed, labor-intensive animation styles for consecutive years is impressive in a vacuum, but it’s their commitment to staying online and layering in pointed and up-to-date jokes on every team that really separates them from their peers.
Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift, and the New Heights podcast all were on the receiving end of some jabs. Russell Wilson drove a van that said, “Broncos Country, Let’s Move.” A shirtless Kirk Cousins was caught DJing at Magic City in Atlanta. Chiefsaholic’s court trial was on display. And, of course, proud misogynist Harrison Butker was alone in the kitchen, cooking a frozen pizza during the credits. *Chef’s kiss*
Who Got Screwed?
The only tradition stronger than the Chargers’ social media domination is fan bases using schedule release day to complain. The bye is too early! The bye is too late! The schedule is too front-loaded! There are too many potential bad-weather games!
But a couple of teams have valid complaints. The Patriots’ schedule really is brutal.
New England will trot out a first-year head coach, first-year offensive play caller, and rookie quarterback as an 8.5-point road underdog against Joe Burrow and the Bengals to start the year, and their schedule in Weeks 1-5 is the third toughest of any team’s in the league, per Warren Sharp’s forecasted win totals. Their full season schedule is the second toughest. Sure, they’ll benefit from a pretty significant rest edge over the course of the season, but that will be of little relief, as they’re traveling twice to the West Coast and also to London.
The 49ers, conversely, seem to have an easy schedule to start the season, but their net rest differential is third worst of any team’s schedule over the last two decades, per ESPN Analytics. San Francisco will play four (!) different teams coming off bye weeks, including the Cowboys, Bills, and (gulp) Chiefs. The last time they played Kansas City after Andy Reid had an extra week to prepare, it didn’t go so great.
