Get able to see just a little extra of the Washington Commanders, rather less of the New York Jets, and nary a touch of Kansas Metropolis — a minimum of with regards to seeing the Chiefs in individual at SoFi Stadium.
The NFL unveiled its 2025 schedule Wednesday night, the most recent installment in an occasion that has gone from mundane to monumental.
The league has turned its schedule launch into one thing of a nationwide sports activities vacation, lifting the curtain on the months-long technique of discovering the optimum configuration of 272 video games performed over 18 weeks and broadcast or streamed by 11 completely different media companions.
It’s nearly inconceivable to please each franchise and honor each request, however with the assistance of about 5,000 computer systems around the globe crunching numbers 24/7, the NFL’s scheduling workforce sifts via lots of of trillions of potential mixtures earlier than selecting the winner.
Among the many highlights of this 12 months’s schedule:
1. We knew the Chargers have been opening the season in Sao Paulo, however we didn’t know the opponent (till Travis Kelce let it slip this week on his podcast). Sure, it’s the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs making the Week 1 journey to South America. Which means the Chiefs received’t be coming to Los Angeles this season until it’s within the playoffs. The Chargers had an opportunity to “protect” two opponents and make them ineligible for that worldwide recreation, however they selected to not veto a matchup with Kansas Metropolis.
2. The league’s rationale is it desires to provide YouTubeTV an important recreation for that Friday showcase, and that AFC West showdown fills the invoice. True, the Chiefs received’t be coming to SoFi Stadium, however they play there each different 12 months. Had the NFL made Washington or Minnesota the guests in that one, these groups won’t be again in L.A. for an additional seven or eight years.
3. The NFL doesn’t must go large within the Kickoff Opener to get large TV numbers, however the league will achieve this with this 12 months’s marquee matchup: Dallas at Philadelphia. The league didn’t like the way it needed to flex out of that recreation final season.
4. In truth, the opening week options large divisional bookends. It begins with Cowboys-Eagles and ends on Monday evening with Chicago at Minnesota, with the Vikings presumably taking the wrapper off quarterback J.J. McCarthy, final seen profitable a nationwide championship for Michigan.
5. Brief weeks don’t appear to hassle the Rams, and they’ll get two of them this season with a pair of Thursday evening video games — one at dwelling (versus San Francisco in Week 5) and one on the highway (at Seattle in Week 16).
Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford listens to the nationwide anthem together with his teammates earlier than a recreation in October.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions)
6. The Rams requested an East Coast recreation instantly earlier than enjoying Jacksonville in London in Week 7. The NFL obliged, placing the Rams in Baltimore the week earlier than so the workforce may have a shorter journey abroad and already be on Jap time.
7. The Chargers have that lengthy flight to and from Brazil, however they’ll’t play at SoFi in Week 2 as a result of the stadium is enjoying host to a Chris Brown live performance. So the NFL gave them a brief highway journey to Las Vegas and made it a Monday evening recreation.
8. There received’t be a Monday evening doubleheader in Week 1, as in years previous, however there might be two this season, in Weeks 2 and seven.
9. The Commanders are getting a giant bump after their playoff run final season, and that features 5 prime-time appearances for quarterback Jayden Daniels and his teammates, plus a number of nationwide Sunday home windows.
10. The New York Jets, minus Aaron Rodgers, and New England Patriots received’t get as many prime-time appearances as they as soon as did.
11. There’s a altering of the guard this 12 months, with longtime NFL scheduling czar Howard Katz retiring. He’s a legendary determine in league circles who for years just about assembled the schedule in his head, simply as predecessor Val Pinchbeck did for many years. That’s to not say Katz didn’t use an enormous community of computer systems to do the job — he completely did — however he additionally relied closely on his intestine and broadcast instincts.
12. The league has leaned more and more into analytics and information science in constructing the schedule with a workforce led by Michael North, vp of broadcast planning. This 12 months, North added Max St. John, a numbers whiz from the College of Virginia to the group, which additionally consists of Hans Schroeder, Daybreak Aponte, Onnie Bose, Blake Jones, Lucy Popko, Josh Helmrich and Matthew Winston.
13. St. John works as supervisor of broadcast analytics, and is concentrated largely on projecting how reconfigured groups will play this season, versus zeroing in on what they did final season. He mentioned he was shocked by the fluidity of the schedule-building course of: “People think that most things are locked in pretty early on, maybe a couple weeks before the schedule is done. But that’s really not the case. You make one small move here and it reshuffles the entire jigsaw puzzle. Things really don’t get locked in until pretty late which is something that I didn’t expect.”
