The 2018 regular season schedule is officially out for every team and the Chiefs are on primetime five times. Here’s a rundown of the five games.
The Kansas City Chiefs led the NFL last season with six total appearances on primetime television, a slate that included a season-opening shocker of a win ove the New England Patriots at home. One year later, even with another one-and-done playoff turn and a new quarterback under center, the Chiefs are once again among the NFL’s most featured teams with another five appearances in primetime—tied for the NFL lead.
Flex scheduling always plays a part, so the Chiefs might find themselves in the spotlight even more than this, but at the very least, the team will face several tough games under the lights on Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights this year. Here’s a rundown of the five primetime games for the Chiefs in 2018 as we know them now.
October 1
Monday Night Football
@ Denver Broncos
The very first of Kansas City’s five appearances in primetime begins as it should, against a hated division rival. The Denver Broncos might have been basement dwellers just a year ago, but these games are always tough, as are nearly every AFC West contest. The two teams have a lot of emotion flowing every time they play and this year’s game at Mile High will give Patrick Mahomes a chance to show the Denver crowd what he can do with a first-team offense.
If you remember, Mahomes won his only regular season start last year in Week 17 playing with many second-string players around him against a lot of Denver’s primary defenders. Mahomes pulled off the victory in a week the Chiefs were resting Tyreek Hill, Kareem Hunt, Travis Kelce and others. Imagining all of those players in the line-up with him along with the latest addition of Sammy Watkins could easily lead Chiefs Kingdom to believe this is an easy primetime victory.
That said, the Broncos still have a lot of moves to make before the season starts and the Donkeys had no one under center last year like Case Keenum. Believe what you want about his ceiling away from the Minnesota Vikings, but Keenum is already several times better than Paxton Lynch or Trevor Siemian or any other quarterback the Broncos threw out there last year.
The Broncos have revamped quite a bit of their team with much more to go, but know that better quarterback play will make an always close game even closer.