How Tony Romo helped give Chiefs vs. Patriots a Week 1 primetime slot

An NFL official admitted that if Tony Romo had decided to play this season, the Chiefs might not be facing the Patriots in Week 1.

A few days after the release of the 2017 NFL regular season schedule, an interesting nugget about how it came together and what possibilities were involved surfaced via Eric Edholm from Yahoo! Sports. Specifically, it came to light from Mike North, the NFL’s Senior Director of Broadcasting, that the league was more interested in showcasing Tony Romo’s comeback in the season-opening game than the Kansas City Chiefs. Unfortunately for their programming efforts, Romo decided to step into the broadcasting booth instead of putting on a helmet.

As things stand now, the Chiefs and Patriots will open up the season on Thursday Night Football in Week One in what will be a match-up of last year’s top two seeds from the AFC. However, North admits that during the stretch of time where it seemed like Romo might be traded to the Houston Texans (or released to be free to sign there), they were hoping to highlight Romo vs. Tom Brady in the NFL’s opening game.

"“There was zero thought put into Tony Romo’s broadcasting career [when it came to putting together the NFL schedule], but there was a lot of thought put into his potential playing career,” North said. “As we were sitting in that room, still working on that schedule … there was a chance he was going to be the quarterback of the Texans for a minute. It looked like he potentially could have been the quarterback for the Broncos.“We were looking at schedule and thinking to ourselves, what happens if tomorrow we wake up and we read someone’s Twitter feed and Romo is the quarterback of the Texans? What then would we change in our approach to this schedule? A Houston at New England game, for instance.”"

The Chiefs against the Patriots is certainly a nice fallback game, but every match-up begins with the quarterbacks involved in terms of fan interest. The Chiefs boast Pro Bowl players at multiple positions, but not a single one of them would have the draw of watching Romo’s comeback after the subsequent drama in Dallas. Even as a Chiefs fan, it’s very easy to understand why the NFL would want to highlight Romo and Brady in a showdown for the opening of the regular season.

Unfortunately for both the NFL and the Houston Texans, Romo is not suiting up for any team anytime soon. That means the NFL settles for Kansas City in Week One and the Texans are, for now, settling for Tom Savage.