In the seven seasons since Patrick Mahomes became the team’s starting quarterback in 2018, the Kansas City Chiefs have appeared in a total of 37 regular-season primetime (evening) games. That’s second only to the Green Bay Packers with 38. And among the nine teams with at least 29 of these appearances, no team has a better record than Kansas City’s 26-11 mark.
So it’s not surprising that the NFL continues to get the Chiefs into as many national matchups as possible.
In 2024, Kansas City appeared in 10 nationally-televised games. Five were in primetime, while three others were also “standalone” contests: the Black Friday game against the Las Vegas Raiders, December’s Saturday afternoon matchup versus the Houston Texans and the Christmas Day game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Two other matchups were broadcast in every market: Week 7 against the San Francisco 49ers and Week 11 versus the Buffalo Bills.
Despite the team’s big loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl, the Chiefs are likely to appear in at least 10 national games this season, too — at least according to Mike North, who is the league’s vice-president of broadcast planning and scheduling.
“When a team gets good (and has an MVP quarterback) and is the kind of must-see television that our network partners hope for, expect [and] request,” he said on a recent episode of the “It’s Always Gameday in Buffalo” podcast, “you can’t get into a routine. So you do end up seeing the same teams kind of over and over again in primetime.”
North said the Chiefs won’t be the only team that gets a lot of exposure to national audiences.
“For teams like Buffalo, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Green Bay, Dallas [and] Pittsburgh,” he noted, “you’re talking about probably six, seven, eight, nine [or] 10 nationally televised games — when you factor in some of these other windows and the doubleheaders. They’ve got to go somewhere. They might mass up a bunch — kind of in a row — somewhere.”
Last season, seven of the Chiefs’ 17 games were against the previous season’s playoff teams. This year, however, they will play 10 playoff squads: the Texans, Eagles, Denver Broncos, Los Angeles Chargers, Baltimore Ravens Detriot Lions and Washington Commanders at home, plus the Broncos, Chargers and Bills on the road.
The league has noticed.
“The Chiefs have a spectacular schedule,” said North. “I mean, honestly, you could almost just read down the Chiefs’ schedule. They play Detroit. They play Washington. They play Baltimore again. Those are all going to be fun.”
That’s what will draw the most viewers for the league’s broadcast partners — and why the Chiefs will once again be among the NFL’s most visible teams.
