'They're Everywhere!': NFL Exec Talks Complexities of Patriots Schedule
Coming off a playoff-free season and trying to re-capture a sense of constant championship glory, the current New England Patriots are perhaps the definition of "Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players."
That created a bit of a conundrum when creating their 2023 schedule, which was released on Thursday alongside the slates of their 31 NFL competitors. It was a challenge that the league feels they solved well, as the league's vice president of broadcasting Onnie Bose believes that a balance between respecting the Patriots' victorious legacy while acknowledging that they're not exactly at the top of the league's draws.
“They have one game just about everywhere," Bose told Mike Reiss of ESPN. "Each of the prime-time packages, one international, one potential NFL Network, one CBS doubleheader, one Fox doubleheader ... I think that’s illustrative of a team that can play in a lot of places. The legacy of the team and competitiveness of the AFC East plays into that.”
Time will tell if the Patriots are able to keep their national spots in the wake of the NFL's evolving flexible scheduling procedures: while they're locked into Week 2's Sunday night against the divisional rival Miami Dolphins and November's German business trip against the Indianapolis Colts, the Patriots have three consecutive exclusive window games in December.
That stretch starts with a Thursday night showing against the Pittsburgh Steelers before they host the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs in a Monday night contest 11 days later. As Santa Claus comes down the chimney, the Patriots will be in the Rockies to face the Denver Broncos.
To Bose's point, the AFC East sent two teams to the NFL playoffs last year (Miami and the division champion Buffalo Bills) and the runner-ups (the Patriots and New York Jets) lingered in the playoff picture until the final stages of the regular season. Additions from elsewhere (i.e. the Patriots getting JuJu Smith-Schuster while Jalen Ramsey and Aaron Rodgers respectively went to Miami and New York) will only raise the level of competitive action within the division, which has placed multiple teams on the AFC playoff bracket in five of the past seven seasons.
New England opens its 2023 season on Sept. 10 against the defending NFC champions from Philadelphia at Gillette Stadium.
Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags
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