The NFL made a huge mistake with the Bills and Chiefs, and it’s shaping up to be a costly blunder for everyone involved
Not a good look by the league ahead of the Week 9 matchup between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs.
The Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs are set for action in Week 9. Buffalo hopes to continue its regular-season dominance over the Chiefs, with kickoff set for 4:25 p.m. EDT.
Why this isn’t a primetime game is beyond me. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for 1 p.m. EDT kickoffs, and even 2:25 p.m. isn’t bad, but this feels like a huge miss by the NFL or whoever was responsible for scheduling this game.
If history is any indication, it will be one of the best games of the regular season. Yes, the Bills have their struggles on offense and defense. Yes, the Kansas City Chiefs aren’t destroying teams left and right, but come on, it’s two of the best quarterbacks in the league dueling it out.
Surely, despite some issues, the Chiefs and Bills game would be far more exciting than the “Thursday Night Football” game or even the “Monday Night Football” games. Baltimore Ravens against the Miami Dolphins, and Arizona Cardinals versus the Dallas Cowboys, sound much less enjoyable than the Chiefs versus the Bills, no disrespect to those clubs.
Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills have one of the best rivalries in sports
Some of the best Bills games in recent memory have come against the Chiefs. While Buffalo has gotten their number during the regular season, it’s the postseason that ultimately matters the most.
Let’s take a look at some of the numbers. In the Bills’ 30-21 victory over the Chiefs in Week 11 of the 2024 season, 31.2 million people tuned in. At the time, it was the most-watched game of the 2024 NFL season and the most-watched regular-season NFL game, excluding Christmas and Thanksgiving, since the Patriots and Colts played one another in Week 9… of 2007.
Rewind the clock a little to Buffalo’s divisional playoff loss to the Chiefs; the two teams drew 50.39 million viewers on CBS, the largest NFL audience outside the Super Bowl and conference championship games at the time. The game peaked with 56.24 million viewers, the highest-rated NFL game, excluding the same information, since the Packers and Cowboys divisional round game… in 2017.
Sure, CBS could have protected that game, especially given the large crowd drawn to watch, but this contest deserves as many eyeballs as possible. It’s a disservice to fans of the league, not just Chiefs or Bills fans.
At the end of the day, the NFL missed a golden opportunity to showcase one of its premier rivalries on a national stage. Allen versus Mahomes has become must-see television, and even with both teams battling through inconsistencies, the matchup deserves more than a regional slot. Despite that, history tells us that the Bills and Chiefs won’t need the lights to put on a show.
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