Albert Breer on Toughest NFL Schedules, Top Draws for Primetime Games

Everyone, everyone is paying a lot.

All right.

Welcome in.

It's the Brew Report for Friday, May 15th.

The schedule is here.

We've known who's playing who for 4 months now, but now we know when and where.

And so what I want to do today is pick apart a couple of things that I think are, are more interesting about the schedule and how this whole thing lays out.

And, and the first thing, and I think that this is always an interesting aspect of it is who got the most primetime games cause essentially that tells you Who the networks want and who the brand name teams in the NFL are.

And so, I've got a list here of 8 teams that are on prime time, either 6 or 7 times, and it's not a perfect science, but for the most part, you would refer to these 8 teams as the marquee teams in the NFL.

Those 8 teams are the Dallas Cowboys, always there regardless of record, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Chicago Bears, the Green Bay Packers.

The Seattle Seahawks, the Buffalo Bills, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the Los Angeles Rams.

So you have the Super Bowl champions in there.

You have a couple of historic franchises and the Bears and the Packers.

Um, you have a couple of teams that have been long-standing, um, powerhouses and the Eagles and the Chiefs, and the Rams, then, of course, the Cowboys.

So it's all relative common sense, you know, I think it also shows that some of the teams that went through a bump in 2025 takes a little bit more than the one-year uptick to get onto that list, but that generally tells you who the biggest brands are.

And there's another element to this that I think is interesting too.

is you have more teams maxing out.

We're gonna explore this a little bit later in the show, but you have more teams maxing out now.

And this is a push for the NFL to go bigger and more big windows, and last year was sort of the start of this.

They used to use some of the bigger, bigger windows, the Thanksgiving window, the opening window to prop teams up, right?

Like a few years ago, there was the experiment, let's put Detroit as a rising team, and it worked out for the league into the kickoff window.

Um, what you're seeing more often now is the league is looking to set records in those windows.

So they're putting their biggest brands in the biggest windows.

So essentially, instead of using the windows to prop the teams up, they're using the teams to prop the windows that are already very big up.

And taking big swings at Grand Slams.

And so, again, last year, you saw it with the league putting the Cowboys opposite the Eagles in the kickoff game and then putting the Chiefs opposite the Cowboys on Thanksgiving and uh, that, that, that late afternoon window.

And those sorts of things are all over the schedule.

Look at the Christmas slate, look at the Thanksgiving slate, a Super Bowl rematch in the kickoff game.

Um, it's just sort of this idea of trying to supercharge all the biggest windows and create the biggest ratings, and the ability now to make every game a free agent, some of the relaxation of some of the rules, um, on short weeks and everything else has created an environment where you can put more of your biggest teams into the biggest windows.

So again, the Cowboys, Eagles, Bears, Packers, Seahawks, Bills, Chiefs, and Rams, a pretty logical list.

They're the teams that wind up maxing out or coming close to maxing out in primetime games.

Our second topic, and this is another thing that's really clear, um, in looking at the schedule, um, and we've known for a couple of days now, 9 international games.

So you've got the 3 games in London.

You've got a game in Paris, you've got a game in Madrid, you've got a game in Munich, you've got a game in Rio, you've got a game in Mexico City, and of course, you've got the opening game in Melbourne, which will be played as the 2nd game of the 272 played this year.

Um, and again, this is another one of those big picture things for the NFL, right?

Is about 20 years ago, they make the decision, we don't have that much room to grow up.

Um, more domestically, so we have to grow out.

So that's what going back to LA with not one but two teams is.

That's what going to 17 games is .

That's what going to 14 teams instead of 12 teams in the playoffs is, it's growing inventory.

You have more to sell.

And one of the biggest ways you can grow inventory and grow new is, is, is to grow in new markets because all of the inventory is new in those markets.

And so, Um, you know, certainly this year, you see a renewed emphasis on going international.

Um, and I think the hope is if they can get to an 18-game schedule, then they put 16 games overseas every year.

So that would mean every single team in the NFL will go overseas every year and you'd be in a rhythm where you'd play 9 home games, 8 road games, and a neutral site site game one year, and then the next year, you play 8 home games.

One neutral site game and nine road games.

So they're building towards that.

Um, I think at one point, you know, going back to 2007 when they first went to London, the endgame was to put teams permanently overseas.

Um, logistically, that became more difficult that, that, that, that, that's, that's remained difficult.

They had hoped that there would be some advances in air travel and that sort of thing that would help push them.

To where they would be able to have a team overseas by now.

The goal was to have one within 15 years from that 2007 date.

They've obviously not hit that.

Um, but in absence of that, and in absence of being able to put a team overseas full-time or even create a whole division overseas at a time, they're looking at the idea of putting a full schedule over there.

And so, to me, like this is gonna continue to grow and we're gonna continue to see them go to other markets overseas.

Is Italy a market they look at?

It's popular in Austria.

Is Austria a market they look at when we're looking at different places to go in Europe.

Um, all of these things are on the table now as they continue to expand, uh, professional football overseas and, you know, look, flag football is a part of this too.

Um, one of the inherent advantages that soccer and basketball have is their sports are very easy to export.

Basketball, you lay down some blacktop, put up a couple of hoops, roll out the balls, you can get kids playing.

Soccer, it's even easier.

A couple of goals, bag of balls, you got kids playing.

Tackle football is a very hard sport to export.

When you're talking about people actually participating, flag football simplifies that, which is one reason why the NFL has leaned so hard into developing flag, and it does help introduce uh the game to, to girls, um, as a participation.

Sport, but again, like the bigger piece of it, it helps you export the game so you have more people with the football on their hands internationally.

Um, our third topic, and this is kind of like an inside look into how they build the full schedule.

We have a full look at that online.

Um, but I think one thing that we, we need to, like that everybody needs to understand here is that the schedule, the way this has gone, more midweek games and everything else, we're probably not going back.

Um, and the reason why is because again, they're trying to add inventory and create new broadcast windows that they can wind up selling off.

And we see it with Netflix now.

Netflix has the week 1 game, the week 18 game, the game on Thanksgiving Eve, the 2 games on Christmas, the event television, that's their big event package, right?

So maybe say at some point they have the Sunday morning package as a result of expanding the, the, the, the, the international series.

You're gonna find, they're gonna keep finding ways to create more broadcast windows and to really explain to people why they have to continue to put big games into these windows.

You're seeing more big games on Thursday night, you're seeing more big games in on Thanksgiving and Christmas, you're seeing more big games.

In, in, in, in, in, in, in all of the different Nooks and crannies of the schedule, which means you've got to put more stress on the better teams.

The reason why is because there was a point, if you want to go back 15 or 20 years, where what these networks were paying for their packages was tiered.

So you pay more for the Sunday night package and you might pay for the Sunday afternoon package, then you might pay for the Monday night package.

So it's easy to explain to ESPN say that the Monday night games, why they are getting the quality of game that is not the same as Sunday night.

Well, in the last broadcast deals, they were able to get up to a point where Everyone, everyone is paying a lot.

And if you want them to keep paying that, you gotta give them a good product.

So the idea of Thursday night now, which was once NFL Network, the idea of just jamming every team on, on Thursday night and giving everybody a primetime game on Thursday night, that doesn't work anymore because Amazon is not gonna stand for that.

ESPN same thing, like you can't, you have to give them better games if you want them paying close to what NBC is paying for Sunday Night Football.

So that goes back to the 8 teams that we mentioned before, and um the Cowboys, the Eagles, the Bears, the Packers, the Seahawks, the Bills, the Chiefs, the Rams getting 6 or 7 primetime games.

It also plays into now 5 teams.

This is an incredible number , 5 teams not showing up in primetime at all.

That's the Jets, the Titans, the Raiders, the Cardinals, and the Dolphins.

So those 5 teams will not play a primetime game.

That is 100%.

A, is, is in deference to the networks and saying , we're gonna give you what you want as much as we possibly can.

And I think the effect of this competitively is the strain that is put on certain teams.

Last year, it was the Chiefs, the year before it was the Chiefs, and the amount of midweek windows they were going into and playing on Christmas and all that different stuff.

This year, I would argue the team that took it on the chin was the Rams, and I have their schedule in front of me and I think this is a great example of it.

They open in Australia.

OK.

So that, first of all, hasn't been done before.

And so they play one of the most important games against the Niners in Melbourne, Australia on September 11th over there.

It'll be September 10th here when that game is broadcast.

Then they got to come back from Australia, they go into a Monday night game.

So that means after coming back from Australia, their week 2 to 3 turn, that will be a short week.

And on the back end of that short week, they are going to Denver.

So, short week in Denver at altitude, 17 days after or 16 days after playing in Australia.

After they go to Denver, they come back.

Now they got to go across the country to Philadelphia.

After that, they've got a game against Buffalo and then another short week coming back to play Arizona.

It normalizes a little bit from there with a trip to Washington in the middle, and then you go into the back half of the schedule.

They don't have a true bye week because they play on Thanksgiving Eve.

So, they go.

Sunday the 15th , 10 days of rest, they go to, they, they, they, they play on that Wednesday, on Thanksgiving Eve Wednesday, then they play the following Thursday, then they play the following Sunday.

So they play Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday, no bye week, that's in lieu of a bye.

Then they go at San Francisco, one of the biggest games of the year at the end of the, at the back end of that, that's after playing the Packers and the Chiefs leading into that San Francisco game.

They go to Seattle on a short week to play on Christmas night.

And after that, they've got a trip across the country to Tampa in one of those Saturday flex games before finishing the season with Seattle.

It's a difficult schedule , ultimately, it's uh, it's, it's, it's actually a bit of a compliment in that they're so in demand, so many people want them.

I mean, I think they've got a chance to maybe have a better team in September than they have right now, uh, based on how aggressive they generally are, um, in building, uh, but it does.

does potentially create a situation where this is gonna take a toll on them, and it's gonna be interesting to see how that affects some of the older players in the team, you know, guys like Matthew Stafford and Devonte Adams, but it's the new reality of the NFL which again comes back to what all these networks and the streaming services are paying for the packages.

They're not paying all due respect to get Titans Browns.

They're not paying to get Raiders Cardinals.

They're paying to have marquee teams in their networks, and that puts stress on the marquee teams to play more primetime games, which again, you got a quarter of the league playing 6 or 7 primetime games, um, and it can add stress to some of these teams.

Um, going international and in the Rams' case, playing games all over the schedule where they have games now scheduled for 6 of the 7 days of a week.

Appreciate you guys coming out.

Um, I appreciate you guys following all of our schedule release content this week.

I think all of it's a little overblown and a little silly, but I think we had fun with it.

Live stream with Connor was great last night.

You guys can check that out.

I think it still lives on YouTube.

Um, and you can leave all your comments down below as always here on the YouTube page or you can get to me on my social media at Albert Breer on Twitter, at Albert R Breer on Facebook, at Albert_Breer on Instagram.

Appreciate you guys coming out.

We will see you next week.