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Rich Cimini, ESPN Staff Writer
The New York Jets have recorded a record number of primetime games through the first three months of the 2024 season. Because the appeal of four-time MVP Aaron Rodgers was too great to ignore, the NFL acknowledged Thursday.
“Yes, there are a ton of prime-time games early in the season, but we definitely feel like the Jets owe it to us,” Mike North, the NFL’s vice president of broadcast planning, said during a video conference with reporters. .
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the Jets will play six night games in the first 11 weeks. This is the most games played by any team since the 1970 merger. The NFL and its TV networks had great success with the Jets last season (five games in prime time). But it backfired when Rodgers suffered a season-ending Achilles tendon injury in Week 1.
“When we had this conversation a year ago, we were all all in on the Jets and for him to last four plays was disheartening for a lot of us,” North said. “I think we can start again, and certainly when our broadcast partners came to us early in the process talking about what storylines they wanted to focus on at the beginning of the season, obviously the return of Aaron Rodgers was key for everyone. .”
North said the Jets were a “passionate” team even without Rodgers. They went 7-10 and added that they improved their roster this offseason. Eight months after surgery, the 40-year-old quarterback is healthy and participating in offseason workouts without any restrictions, according to the Jets.
The Jets play two games Monday night (ESPN/ABC), two games Sunday night (NBC) and two games Thursday night (Prime Video). They begin their “Monday Night Football” schedule on September 9th against the San Francisco 49ers. North said the flexible schedule allows him to get more primetime dates later in the season.
“I hope he’s healthy, I hope they stay relevant,” North said.
In other scheduling/TV-related developments, the NFL said it will play two games on Christmas Day, a Thursday in 2025. According to the league, there will be Netflix games in the afternoon and Prime games in the evening.
Netflix will be streaming two games this Christmas (Wednesday): the Kansas City Chiefs at the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens at the Houston Texans. Netflix will also stream at least one game in 2026 as part of a three-year deal announced Wednesday.
As for the 2024 schedule, NFL Vice President of Media Distribution Hans Schroeder said the league is excited about the broadcast debut of Tom Brady, the new lead analyst for Fox Sports. The seven-time Super Bowl champion is also attempting to purchase a minority stake in the Las Vegas Raiders, raising questions about a possible conflict of interest.
Schroeder said there is no limit to the games Brady can play.
“At this time, Tom is not the owner of the Raiders and as the year begins, Tom can call every game on the schedule,” he said.
League officials also noted some unusual aspects of this year’s schedule. For example, the Steelers and Chicago Bears don’t begin divisional play until Week 11 and close out their schedules with six of their final eight games against AFC North and NFC North teams, respectively. North said it wasn’t intentional.
“It feels like a college basketball schedule where you play non-conference games first,” North said. “It wasn’t intentional, but it wasn’t necessarily what we saw and thought was unfair.”
“It’s probably something we’ll look at moving forward, but again, it’s not necessarily a disqualification,” North said.
Despite some Internet speculation, one scheduling variable that wasn’t taken into account was whether Travis Kelce and the Chiefs were scheduled to play in a location close to one of Taylor Swift’s tour stops.
“Midway through the season, when Taylor was playing Toronto, I saw a lot of conspiracy theorists talking about Kansas City in Buffalo,” North said. “It definitely wasn’t on our radar screen.”
Neither game on Christmas Day will be in prime time. Steelers-Chiefs kicks off at 1 p.m. and Ravens-Texans kicks off at 4:30 p.m. This decision was made with market research and international audiences in mind.
“We initially talked about replicating what we do in the division and championship (games) and seeing a 3 and 6:30 p.m.-type kick,” Schroeder said. “Even before we launched Netflix’s global view, we received a lot of feedback from the market. On Christmas Day, people celebrating the holiday arrive after 8 p.m., eat dinner, travel and have other things to do.
“… Then adding Netflix’s perspective and making 1pm a global priority would be a perfect window for us, and there would be another match for fans around the world at 4:30pm that day. We I thought that was the right window to address.”
ESPN’s Brooke Pryor and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
