For nearly 20 seasons, the National Football League has allowed the regular season schedule to change, or flex, in rare instances for Sunday Night Football programming in the case that the game set for the original broadcast slot was a total dud. Given that seasons often play out very differently than what analysts will predict, it helps sve primetime audiences from some abysmal games.
For the first time in NFL history, the league has given itself and its broadcast partners the chance to flex games in other instances in 2023—for both Thursday Night Football and Monday Night Football—and the Kansas City Chiefs are among the very first teams flexed out of that spot.
If that sounds odd, it is. The Chiefs are the team always being flexed in for the last decade, ever since Andy Reid arrived to establish a new level of success in K.C. However, their opponents as originally scheduled are the New England Patriots. As it turns out, no one really has a great interest in seeing a juggernaut Super Bowl contender beat up on a team clearly destined to hold a top-five pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Instead of playing late in the evening on Monday, December 18th, the Chiefs will instead face the Patriots on Sunday, December 17th at 12:00 p.m. C.T. at Foxborough. That's a major shift in terms of the schedule for the Chiefs, giving them a bit more breathing room before hosting the Las Vegas Raiders on Christmas Day (which falls on a Monday).
In place of K.C.-N.E. on MNF, the ESPN broadcast will now feature the Seattle Seahawks and the Philadelphia Eagles in a late-season clash of NFC contenders.
Here's the complete updated schedule for the Chiefs (all times Central)
- Week 13 - @ Green Bay - Sunday, December 3 - 7:20 p.m.
- Week 14 - vs. Buffalo - Sunday, December 10 - 3:25 p.m.
- Week 15 - @ New England - Sunday, December 17 - 12:00 p.m.
- Week 16 - vs. Las Vegas - Monday, December 25 - 12:00 p.m.
- Week 17 - vs. Cincinnati - Sunday, December 31 - 3:25 p.m.
- Week 18 - @ Los Angeles - TBD