06302023

NFL Schedule for 2023 Includes First Black Friday Game

Kansas City will play the Las Vegas Raiders before the Giants face the reigning N.F.C. champions, the Philadelphia Eagles, in a rematch of last season’s divisional playoff round.

In another change brought on by the new media deals, the N.F.L. will gain more freedom to reslot games on different networks and change kickoff times with greater flexibility. Under the old media rights deals, Fox broadcast most N.F.C. road games and CBS aired most A.F.C. road games, but this season the N.FL. can place a game on any network regardless of conference.

Where “Monday Night Football” games had previously been locked in at the start of the season, ABC and ESPN can now ask the league to move a Sunday game to Monday if there is a more compelling matchup than what had been scheduled. Such a move can only be made between Weeks 12 and 17 of the 18-week regular season.

Teams may also play more than one Thursday night game this season, a change that has rankled some players. Patrick Mahomes, last season’s most valuable player and one of the most popular N.F.L. athletes, expressed his displeasure in a social media post in March.

In the past, players and coaches have been loath to play on Thursday nights because of the short turnaround between Sunday games and matchups that happen four days later. Fans and even Al Michaels, the lead broadcaster for Amazon, have complained about the poor quality of Thursday games.

“There isn’t anybody in our organization that doesn’t put our fans first,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said in March. “Obviously, providing the best matchups for our fans is what we do. That’s part of what our scheduling has always focused on.”

The N.F.L. will play five international games, continuing the league’s expansion efforts overseas. Last season, it added a regular-season game in Germany for the first time, and it will return with two in 2023, when Miami faces Kansas City on Nov. 5 and the Indianapolis Colts challenge the New England Patriots on Nov. 12.

The Jacksonville Jaguars, who have played in London nearly every year since 2012, will become the first N.F.L. team to play two international games in a single season. The team’s owner, Shahid Khan, also owns the Premier League team Fulham F.C., and the Jaguars will use the soccer club’s training facility between playing the Atlanta Falcons on Oct. 1 and facing the Bills on Oct. 8.

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