Written by Kevin Seifert at ESPN.com
The NFL revealed its 2017 schedule Thursday night, and I was inspired to declare instant winners and losers with a full understanding that not a single meaningful game will be played for more than four months.
All data is courtesy of the fast-calculating folks at ESPN Stats & Information.
Winners
Broadcasters and national-television viewers
Last year’s ratings slide for the NFL clearly impacted the league’s schedule-making process. For the first time in five years, neither the Cleveland Browns nor the Jacksonville Jaguars will play in prime time. (They both have “national” games in the 9:30 a.m. ET slot from London.) Instead, the league packed its prime-time schedule with its best draws.
Ten teams have the maximum number of five prime-time games, not including potential flex scheduling later in the season. That list includes the obvious candidates, among them the Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers, New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers.
The Cowboys — the NFL’s ratings gold mine — also have nine late-afternoon kickoffs that traditionally draw larger audiences. Their only 1 p.m. ET kickoffs come in Weeks 4 and 17. The latter, at the Philadelphia Eagles, would likely be moved to a later time if it has playoff implications.
The Browns, on the other hand, are scheduled to kick off all but one of their games at 1 p.m. ET or earlier.
No short weeks for Jaguars and Browns
While that prime-time slight for Cleveland will be interpreted as an insult by many, it’s actually a competitive advantage when you consider it objectively. The Browns and Jaguars are the only teams this season that won’t face a short week and who won’t have to tweak their weekly schedules at all to accommodate alternate game days or times.
When it went to a full season of Thursday night games in 2012, the NFL indicated it would ensure every team played at least once on Thursday for fairness. But in a for-profit entertainment business, a level playing field isn’t going to trump ratings. The 2017 season will mark the first time since then that a team didn’t play at least once on Thursday.
You could argue that the Browns, who are 29-83 since the start of the 2010 season, and the Jaguars (30-82) are simply brought to a level playing field by getting this break. But no matter how you look at it, it’s a scheduling gift from the NFL.
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