The Chiefs head coach has had undoubtedly had a lot on his plate since winning a second consecutive Super Bowl earlier this year. From Rashee Rice’s legal issues following a bizarre hit and run incident, to kicker Harrison Butker’s now infamously controversial speech at a private school, there have been no shortage of headaches for both coach and franchise alike.
Chiefs’ Andy Reid discusses 2024 schedule
As you may have seen, the Kansas City Chiefs have a rather strange schedule awaiting them in the 2024-25 season. Now, while some have attributed that to Taylor Swift, which you can read more about here, the reality is that the Chiefs will be playing on every day of the week except Tuesday this season, something we’ve not seen before. To be clear, the reigning Super Bowl champions will play 14 of their 17 games at 4:25 p.m. ET or later. This is of course on top of the fact that they will play their season opener on Thursday, a game on Black Friday, another in Week 16 on Saturday, and finally one in Week 17 on Christmas Day which happens to fall on a Wednesday.
That said, head coach Andy Reid who didn’t see the schedule prior to its release doesn’t seem to care. “It’s the first time in my career that this has happened, it’s unique and you know how we are, we don’t really care. They can give us a Tuesday game if they want, and we’ll be okay there, too,” Reid said, via a Chiefs transcript. “We work through it, we’ll play anybody, anywhere, whatever they want to do. We’re on board.” Now, it’s worth noting that the NFL clearly took these things into account, scheduling the Chiefs for eight standalone games which is in fact a league-high. On the other hand, that’s also tied to the networks as well who clearly want a piece of the Chiefs’ pie.
The Chiefs are a victim of their success
When you take a look at the Chiefs’ schedule for the coming season, it doesn’t take long to understand that things aren’t normal. For starters, we’ve got NBC which will host four games, including the opening game and the Saturday game just before Christmas with an additional two “Sunday Night Football games. Then, there is ESPN who will broadcast two “Monday Night Football” games before Netflix brings us their first-ever NFL games on Christmas Day. That’s not to mention the eight other games that will be shown on CBS which is also a league-high for the network. Four of those games are also set to be kickoff at 4:25 p.m. ET.
Yet, when you consider the fact that the Chiefs have now won three Super Bowls in the last five years, it’s not surprising that the team is a hot ticket when it comes to ratings. “I feel like our schedule has gotten crazier and crazier every single year,” said Patrick Mahomes last week. “It’s just about preparing for the week ahead of you. We know that we’re going to have a lot of prime-time games. We’ve built up the equity to be able to be in those games. “Now it’s about how can we find a way to be better than we were last year at the end of the season, learn from our mistakes from last year, try to motivate ourselves to get ourselves healthier faster and go out there and win those games because there’s a lot of great football teams we play at the end there.”
Interestingly, The Chiefs will end the season with a road game at the Cleveland Browns on a Sunday, followed by a Saturday game where they will host the Houston Texans. After that, Reid’s men have that aforementioned Christmas Day game at the Pittsburgh Steelers, something that Mahomes spoke directly to. “I’m going to try to be better on Christmas,” Mahomes said. “Because last Christmas was not great,” the Chiefs’ QB stated. As for the season finale, the Chiefs will close things out with a game in Denver against the Broncos.