There are always some crazy oddities when it comes to the NFL schedule and this year is no different. The one weird thing about Quirks is that they’re not all created equally. Some teams will be thrilled with the oddities in their schedule while many other teams won’t be so thrilled with the oddities handed to them by the league office.
So who has the craziest quirks? That’s a great question, so let’s find out.
Here are 17 of the weirdest oddities on the 2023 NFL schedule, starting with the Jets, who had a quirk the NFL has only seen once in the past 90 years.
- The Jets can play 10 games at their home stadium. The Jets will play 10 games at MetLife Stadium, marking only the second time in 93 years that an NFL team will be able to play 10 games at their stadium. If you’re wondering how that happened, it’s simple: every AFC team can play nine games at home this year, and the Jets have one “on the road” game against the Giants. Since 1930, this has only happened once and that happened last year with the Rams. And just for the record, the 1929 Frankford Yellow Jackets were also able to play at least 10 of their games at their home stadium, so that only happened three times in 94 years.
- The jets finally return on Sunday evening. The Jets will host the Chiefs on Sunday night in Week 4, which is quite remarkable as it will be the first time in nearly 12 years that the Jets will play on Sunday night. Their final Sunday night game was in Week 10 of the 2011 SEASON. Scheduling-wise, the addition of Aaron Rodgers definitely helped the Jets, who now have five prime-time games. this year after playing in just one last year.
- Jaguars back Monday night. The Jets won’t be the only team to end a long prime-time drought. The Jags are scheduled to play Monday night against the Bengals in Week 13. When that Dec. 4 game kicks off, it will be almost exactly 12 years since their last game on Monday. The Jaguars haven’t played Monday since Dec. 5, 2011.
- London is calling. The Jaguars will travel to London for back-to-back games this year, marking the first time in NFL history that a team has played two games in London in the same season, obviously making it the first time that a team has played consecutive matches in London. The Jags will be the home team against the Falcons in Week 4 before playing as a road team against the Bills in Week 5.
- The NFL takes over on Saturday. The NFL schedule got a surprise on Saturday: For the first time in more than 40 years, the league will host games on four different Saturdays during the regular season. In the upcoming season, there will be at least one Saturday game in weeks 15-18. The last time the NFL played four different Saturdays was in 1978, the first year of the 16-game schedule.
- Thirsty Thursday. It looks like the NFL is trying to permanently move every Lions game to a Thursday. In the first 12 weeks of the season, the Lions will play three games on Thursday. Thursday’s three games are tied for the most a team has played in a season since 2000 (the 2021 Cowboys, 2019 Bears and 2000 Lions also played three Thursday games).
- Lions and Packers to write history. Of the Lions’ three games on Thursday, two of them will face the Packers, marking the first time since 1967 (the Super Bowl era) that two division rivals have had their two games against each other on a Thursday. .
- A fully NFC Thanksgiving. For the first time in five years, no AFC team will play Thanksgiving. All six teams playing turkey day this year are NFC with Packers at Lions, Commanders at Cowboys and 49ers at Seahawks. It’s actually not that rare. This year will mark the fourth time in the past 10 years that Thanksgiving will be an all-NFC affair.
- Leaving Las Vegas. Thanks to the way the schedule is constructed, the Raiders won’t leave Las Vegas once between Nov. 20 and Dec. 24. year.
- The NFL unveils Monday’s tripleheader. For the first time in NFL history, there is a Monday triple lineup on the schedule. The reason it’s happening this year is that Christmas falls on a Monday and that’s when the triple bill will take place. For a complete overview of the Christmas program, be sure to click here.
- Difficult road to start the season. There are only four teams in the NFL that will have to play their first TWO road games this year and those teams are: the Packers, Raiders, Dolphins and 49ers.
- Difficult road to end the season. There are also four teams that will end the season with two consecutive road games and these teams are: Falcons, Rams, Jets and Steelers.
- Goodbye goodbye. The Rams and 49ers are the two face FOUR teams who will be exempted this year, which is the most in the NFL. This is not ideal as the teams will benefit from additional rest and preparation time before playing them. On the other end of the spectrum, there are 12 teams that will face a total of ZERO opponents after a bye.
- Four teams are excluded from prime time. When it comes to primetime games, this is going to be a boring season for Texans, Cardinals, Falcons, and Colts fans, and that’s because those four teams had NO primetime games. great listener this year. However, the Falcons and Colts will both have a standalone game with each team playing in Europe, so it’s kind of a consolation prize.
- Extra long road trip. The Ravens, Panthers, Broncos, Giants and Titans have one big thing in common this year: They’re the only teams in the league scheduled to play three consecutive road games. While that’s not ideal, NFL teams that are stuck with a three-game road trip on the schedule are 26-19 on those trips since 2018. However, last season was a lousy one for teams that had to do facing a three-game road trip as the Packers (0-3), Dolphins (0-3), Eagles (2-1) and Chiefs (2-1) combined to go 4-8.
Hope you can impress all your friends this weekend with your original knowledge of the NFL schedule.
