KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Chiefs visit to the New England Patriots in Week 15 will no longer be a primetime outing on Monday Night Football as the NFL opted Thursday to move the game’s kickoff to noon Sunday, Dec. 17.
It’s the first time the league has used its new flexible schedule policy on Monday Night Football. When the NFL set the 2023 schedule in May, it anticipated that Chiefs-Patriots would have playoff implications for both teams. Kansas City has done its part, sitting at 8-3 and holding the pole position in the AFC postseason picture. But the Patriots have fallen to 2-9, and the prospect of Patrick Mahomes facing an undetermined New England starting quarterback no longer holds the same allure.
The Philadelphia Eagles at Seattle Seahawks game was originally slated as a 3:25 p.m. central time kickoff, sharing that timeslot with the Dallas Cowboys visiting the Buffalo Bills. The Eagles-Seahawks game moves to Monday night, allowing Cowboys-Bill to assume a virtually national broadcast in the late afternoon window.
The trade makes sense for Fox, which picks up the Chiefs and Mahomes for a noon game followed by the Dallas-Buffalo contest. The Chiefs and Cowboys are the two biggest rating draws on television, so clearing the way for those games makes for the network, even though they are giving up a Philadelphia game.
The league also set kickoff teams the same weekend for a Saturday tripleheader on NFL Network. Minnesota will visit Cincinnati at noon, followed by Pittsburgh at Indianapolis at 3:30 p.m. followed by Denver at Detroit at 7:15 p.m.
After their contest at Green Bay Sunday night, the Chiefs don’t have any primetime games scheduled, and it’s unlikely the team will have any games flexed from Sunday afternoon into a primetime spot.
The team’s Week 17 game against Cincinnati, however, may get moved from a 3:25 p.m. kickoff in Kansas City to a noon game. The league has until Dec. 19 to decide on the kickoff time, but if the Bengals without Joe Burrow are no longer a significant factor in playoff scenarios, the league may move the game in favor of a more significant game, such as Miami at Baltimore currently scheduled for noon.
