Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs on MNF: NFL Scheduling Diluting the Game
We learned the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs kickoff their seasons on MNF. Also, this NFL schedule release and other changes are diluting the game.
We learned that yesterday, as well as where the game will be: in Missouri.
It's great news for the Broncos considering Patrick Mahomes' injury and his process getting back from it.
But this entire NFL schedule release is overhyped, and as the details emerge for the Netflix games, the NFL is being diluted by their greedy scheduling.
Denver Broncos - Kansas City Chiefs Start 2025 on MNF
How are we feeling about the season kicking off on Monday Night Football, Broncos Country?
Considering the lead up to the NFL season, complete with a month-long training camp and the preseason games, having to wait until Monday to see your team play can be excruciating.
The last time the Broncos kicked off a season on MNF was in 2022, a 17-16 loss to the Seattle Seahawks.
That year, there was a Thursday Night Football game to kickoff the season, then all the rest of the teams played on Sunday, and finally the Broncos played.
While the NFL schedule release hasn't happened in full, we have seen some leaks. And we know the 49ers and Rams will play in Australia on Thursday Night, Sept. 10, 2026. It's the first game in Australia; more on the league diluting their product in a minute.
We also know the Broncos thankfully won't be playing an international game this year. Here's the slate:
René Bugner
As for the Broncos, getting the Chiefs in Week 1 and in K.C. is huge.
For one, Patrick Mahomes may not be ready to play. He's expected to be good to go in Game 1, but his knee surgery to fix a torn ACL and LCL is a big deal, and even if he's back he may not be 100%.
Secondly, avoiding playing at Arrowhead in November and December is huge because the Chiefs are damn-near unbeatable there late in the season. It's also a kind of win-win because if Denver beats the Chiefs at home, great. If they lose, hey it's only Week 1 after all.
But the whole fact that the NFL is trying to make their annual schedule release a thing is ridiculous and desperate.
NFL Scheduling is Diluting the Game
Last week, I got an NFL PR email announcing the schedule release would be coming soon. There wasn't even a date on it.
Seriously, stop trying to make the schedule release happen. It's not going to happen.
The irony is the NFL trying to make the release of when their games are played an event, much like how they turned the NFL Draft into appointment television in the 90s and early 2000s.
But the viewership of the Draft this year was down 12% compared to 2025.
The league manufactured an event in the Draft and now they want the schedule release to mimic it.
No. Nope. Nuh-uh.
Then, the details of the Netflix deal with the league came out, and it was just crazy. Here's why:
NFL games should be on free TV
First and foremost, NFL games should be on free TV. Or at least on cable channels like ESPN that come with basic cable.
The fact that Netflix has any games is an issue for fans who don't have the streamer.
For years, NFL games were all on CBS, FOX, NBC, or ABC/ESPN. Then the league started putting a few a year on their own NFL Network.
Lately, an NFL fan needs cable (for ESPN) or Disney+, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Peacock, and NFL Network to watch all the games.
International games pull the NFL away from America
Netflix will also show the first-ever NFL game in Australia, which in all likelihood will be the regular season kickoff.
The NFL is diluting it's product by creating so many international games, and by putting them in far away places where the average fan has no chance to ever watch them in person.
Patriots owner Robert Kraft—who hired Jeffrey Epstein's lawyer when he was caught soliciting prostitution—said the plan is for every team to play an international game every year. And the league is inching closer to that 16-game total, as they're up to nine currently.
Even though the games are on way too early, American fans have no chance to attend them, and the product on the field suffers.
Football on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Christmas Day
Rewind only a few years and Roger Goodell said the league wouldn't play on Fridays.
Now, they've been playing on Black Friday—the day after Thanksgiving—for the last few years.
This year, they're going the other way and adding "Thanksgiving eve" to the calendar.
That's right, NFL football on a Wednesday.
That means the only day there will be no football this year is a Tuesday. And it seems simple to reason that will change in the near future as well.
It's a dilution of the product.
Back in the day in the 90s, there were games on Sundays and Mondays. Then, a handful of Saturday games late in the season. Then Thursday Night Football every week became a thing.
Similarly, the league said they weren't going to play games on Christmas Day, and that's become a staple of the league calendar.
The aforementioned Chiefs and Broncos played on Christmas Day last year.
Call it Merry Nixmas.
Hey, call me old fashioned, but Christmas is a day that should be spent with family. Not sitting around in front of the TV watching grown men hit each other and sometimes render one another unconscious.
NFL Owners Want NFL to have Endless Growth, a Fool's Errand
What's wrong with capitalism?
The focus and need for endless growth. The greed.
It's not enough for a company to simply be successful. It needs to grow at an exponential rate. Even if that means making the product worse while simultaneously charging more money.
Because sustainable, never ending growth isn’t possible.
Shrinkflation is probably the simplest way to see this. Charging more for a smaller sized product and pretending like it's always been that size.
Google's search getting worse over time, including the rise of AI overviews which are completely wrong sometimes, is another great example.
Apple's iPhones trying to outdo the last version, even though they're all basically the same nowadays.
The enshittification of the internet is another prime example. You can't go to a free website without adds barging in every few sentences, throwing off your reading flow, and distracting you from getting to the point. Or adds completely blocking what you're trying to see, forcing you to click to close them and still moving you away from your desired page.
Now we're seeing the NFL—one of the most successful businesses in America today—look for their own endless growth.
The TV deals and the incredible amounts of money the league has earned led to this distribution of exclusive games to a growing number of paid streaming platforms.
Similarly, in 2021 the league went from 16 to 17 games, eliminating one preseason game.
Next up is reducing the preseason to 2 games, and increasing the regular season to 18 games. A move which will again dilute the NFL product. And put player safety at risk.
In recent years, increasing by only one regular season game but eliminating a preseason contest has left the first 2-4 weeks of the regular season to feel like preseason football.
The expansion of the international games, and this expansion into previously untouched days—Christmas, Wednesdays—are all the owners grasping at that hope of endless growth.
The league is going to reach a critical endpoint soon enough. We may already be witnessing the peak of the NFL.
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Rich Kurtzman was born and raised in Denver Colorado and attended Colorado State University in Fort Collins in the aughts. He's been a professional writer since 2011, covering Colorado State football and men's basketball, as well as the Denver Broncos, for many outlets. Current Denver Broncos work can be found on Mile High Sports. Previous credits include CBS Denver and The USA TODAY Sports Media Group.
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