Caleb Harris
Mike Norte, the NFL vice president of broadcast planning, explaining the programming process to me like this on Thursday afternoon. He said that he and his group treat the schedule like we all treat college work—there’s never a reason to turn it in early.
So they took all the time they could. And the 2024 NFL regular season schedule, released moments ago, appeared in the league’s database around 2 a.m. on Sunday, May 12. Computers buzzed all week to release this schedule, which then drew human eyes to it on Sunday morning. It was then passed on to several people in the league
office in the afternoon. And then a four-hour Zoom was held on Sunday night before being sent to Commissioner Roger Goodell around midnight.
Goodell signed off on the schedule on Monday afternoon and the race began.
Last year, North and I talked before the official schedule release and decided to keep the tradition going this year. Below is an edited transcript of our nearly half-hour conversation about how the schedule came about and why certain decisions were made. To enjoy.
I think many of us were expecting last week’s schedule. Maybe we shouldn’t have expected this last week, but I think a lot of people with that expectation said, ‘Well, what took so long?’ Why did it take longer than in previous years? If this is true, why does this happen?
“Yeah, I’m not sure if that’s really true. I mean, last year it was May 11th and here we are on May 15th. So yeah, I think it’s a few days later, but it’s still in the same kind of first couple weeks in May. Part of that is wanting to react to what we see in the draft. You’ll notice when the schedule comes out, some of these teams are drafting young quarterbacks, whether it’s Washington or New England or obviously Chicago, some kind of exposure. on national television at the start of the season, maybe we didn’t want to commit to that until we knew exactly what they were going to do with their draft capital. And again, the solution space for potential NFL schedules is truly infinite. , I know everyone is waiting for us, but man, I kind of wish we had another month.
Well, hey, you mentioned the rookie quarterbacks. I think it was interesting to see the three games in London with three rookie defenders. Is this just a total coincidence with Chicago, New England and Minnesota?
“The ‘home teams’ were known. Designated teams, so to speak. The international games are from the conference with the extra home game – with the nine home games each season – so this year it’s the NFC. So Chicago , Minnesota, Carolina, these guys were going and they knew they were going to Jacksonville, you know, so these teams were going.
known now becomes a question of knowing who the visiting team is.”
And then we talked to all the potential visiting teams from those four teams. Hey, look, you know you play in Jacksonville, in Minnesota, in Chicago, in Carolina this year. You know one of your games will go international. You know, how would you feel about going? Is it something your team would support? Is it something your team or coach would strongly oppose? Is there a connection for you to any of those markets, like obviously the Jets and their owner having an ambassador there? The New York Giants having Germany as one of their marketing territories… So it’s fortunate that it worked out, certainly for our international friends, that they will see, you know, some of these young quarterbacks playing for some of them actually in his first national exposure on television.”
Christmas. Chiefs at Steelers and Ravens at Texans on Christmas Day. This is not even a one-off issue. It’s like, hey. Mike North. Christmas. Go.
“Yeah, I think I would support you even, you know, the notion of the NFL even playing on Wednesdays.”
Yes, because I asked you about this last year when we did this…
“And that’s why I said I didn’t think it was on our radar screen. Look, it really wasn’t on our radar screen. But the more we delved into it, there were a few things that I think are kind. The first is that the fans they said, right?
“Now the question is how would you do something like that? How would you play on a Wednesday? We play Thursday games pretty much every week of the season, and the teams that play on a Thursday play the Sunday before. Well, if you’re going to play on Wednesday, you could have these teams play on the Saturday before, Saturday through Wednesday, basically the same thing, Sunday through Thursday, well how would that work? Will they play each other in a small round robin in the final stretch?
“So you can find four teams that play each other, which are worthy of multiple national television windows, and they all play each other, one at home and one away. about Christmas, we’re pretty comfortable with the idea that Kansas City, Houston, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, they all play each other. We think these are four teams that will be relevant in the playoffs.”
Speaking of the Chiefs, they play every day except Tuesday, right?
“Yes, and I’m sure we’ll catch them on Tuesday at some point. But yes, they’re playing Thursday, Black Friday, Saturday before the Christmas game, obviously Sundays and Mondays and obviously Wednesday So yeah, they’re playing all of them. They’re obviously one of the biggest brands we support. Super Bowl champions, and we have used them historically. Jonathan, you know, we use them to support some of these national television windows that are maybe changing viewer behavior and trying to remind people that, hey, there are other ways to access NFL content, whether it’s the wild game on Peacock on last year, obviously using them on Black Friday this year to continue to try to build that brand, and certainly the, uh, the Christmas game on Wednesday afternoon.
The AFC title game rematch will be in Week 1. The NFL title game rematch between the Lions and 49ers will be in Week 17 on “Monday Night Football.”
“It’s really kind of a capper to a historic NFL opening weekend for us. When you think about playing Thursday, Friday, Sunday and Monday, Thursday’s opening game obviously stands on its own… We’ll have Dallas-Cleveland as Fox’s first doubleheader. Tom Brady calling his first game in the booth for Fox with Matthew Stafford back in Detroit for Sunday Night Football for NBC” And Aaron Rodgers returning to his northern roots. from California seemed like a really fun way to end the entire opening weekend, starting with Baltimore, Kansas City to kick off.
“And this allows you to take the Detroit-San Fran game and really deploy it somewhere else, and have it anchor the end of the ESPN schedule. It seemed like a good place to put that game. It’s a rematch of the NFC Championship, but maybe it’s a preview of the NFC Championship game for this year.”
Last year, the NFL bet big on the Lions, putting them in many prime time slots, including the kickoff game. And that obviously paid off. Based on something you said earlier [that’s been edited out of this transcript] I have to believe you all think this year’s Texans could be last year’s Lions, so to speak. After not putting them in an independent window last year, how many will Houston get this year?
“We won’t miss them again. They’re in primetime games: two Sunday nights, one Monday night and one Thursday night. And they’re part of the Christmas round robin. So they’re in the national Saturday windows and Wednesday. There in Weeks 16 and 17. So, six nationally televised games by a team last year, as you mentioned, were set to zero… It’s a shame that this was the first time that many were. People have seen CJ Stroud play quarterback, so I hope we don’t have the same problem this year.”
You bet big on the Jets last year with so many primetime slots and four plays into the season, their year is over. What did you decide to do with them this year?
“Look, lightning rarely strikes twice in exactly the same way. Anyone who thinks the NFL is scripted certainly shouldn’t think we’ve scheduled Aaron Rodgers to miss the rest of the season after just four plays. back. There will be a lot of Jets on national television… We were all on the Jets last year. Most of our broadcast partners were. this year at the beginning of the process.
“Each of them were hoping to have an Aaron Rodgers comeback story game early in the season to talk about, so you’ll see them early in the season. On ESPN, on Amazon, in London, on Sunday Night Football. be a healthy diet of New York Jets games.”
Grades
- Last year, the NFL had eight teams with multiple short weeks. For a long time, the league avoided multiple short weeks like the plague. This year, there are 14 teams with several short weeks. It’s the new normal in the NFL, with so many different broadcast partners and multiple independent windows to fill.
- Back to Christmas… these games will be played at 1pm ET and 4:30pm ET. North explained that because Netflix will capture a true global audience, the league will also be able to meet its European fans on Christmas Eve and maximize the holiday.
- The Jets haven’t finished the regular season at home since the 2016 season. It’s kind of crazy when you think about it. Either way, Gang Green made it clear to the league office that he wanted to finally finish the season at home. The Jets will get their wish when they face the Dolphins in Week 18.
- Last year, the Cardinals and Texans were the only teams not scheduled for a national window. This year, all 32 teams will have at least one national TV game. It could be a London game or an NFL Network Week 17 game on Saturday. But everyone is stuck with one of them in 2024.
