Arrowheadlines: NFL distances itself from Harrsion Butker’s speech

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NFL distances itself from Chiefs’ Harrison Butker’s Benedictine College speech | The Athletic (nytimes.com)

During the commencement speech, Butker referred to Pride Month as an example of the “deadly sins.” He also addressed gender ideologies and said a woman’s most important title is “homemaker.”

“Not the deadly sins sort of Pride that has an entire month dedicated to it,” Butker said, “but the true God-centered pride that is cooperating with the holy ghost to glorify him.”

Butker spoke for more than 20 minutes to students at the Catholic school in Atchison, Kan., saying he wanted the graduating class to prevent political leaders from interfering with social issues that impact their relationship with the church.

In response, NFL senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer Jonathan Beane said in a statement to The Athletic that Butker gave the speech “in his personal capacity.”

“His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger,” Beane said. His statement was first reported by People.

2024 NFL schedule release winners, losers: Who came out ahead? | USA Today

Taylor Swift fans

The Chiefs have eight standalone windows, including Black Friday and Christmas afternoon, scheduled as they pursue the first-ever Super Bowl three-peat – ample opportunities for the pop star to cheer on beau Travis Kelce in front of their (her) adoring fans. K.C. will play on every day of the week this season except Tuesday, the first club do that since the 1927 New York Yankees (yes, there was an NFL version, too). CBS apparently falls into this category, the network set to broadcast eight Chiefs games – at least double any of its broadcast competitors – though Fox scored the Super Bowl 58 rematch with San Francisco.

2024 NFL Schedule Release: Predicting Every Team’s Win-Loss Record | The 33rd Team

KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (O/U 11.5)

As long as Patrick Mahomes is healthy, the Kansas City Chiefs can expect to win 11-plus games. This season should be no different, especially after they added Marquise Brown and Xavier Worthy to their passing attack.

The defense continues to be an underrated unit, and this is the NFL’s best coaching staff. Expect the Chiefs to contend for the No. 1 seed again this season.

Record Prediction: 12-5

2024 NFL schedule release: Win-loss predictions, analysis for every team | FOX Sports

Kansas City Chiefs

Final record prediction: 12-5

The Chiefs have won at least 11 games in nine of Andy Reid’s 11 seasons as head coach. They’ve won at least 11 games in each of the six seasons with Patrick Mahomes as the starting quarterback, including their worst regular-season record of 11-6 last season. The Chiefs are better this year, adding more weapons for Mahomes while maintaining most of their defense from last season.

They always play a tough schedule, but they get the Ravens and Bengals in the first two weeks, which favors the fast-starting Chiefs. (Mahomes is 15-4 in September.) Kansas City has a pair of tough road contests in Pittsburgh and Cleveland, but on the other hand, the AFC West is paired with the NFC South this season, which means four winnable games against a poor division. And there are also the six division games, where Mahomes has won 30 of 35. Even though I believe the Chiefs will coast through the regular season, just doing enough to win the division and preserve their older players, I have the Chiefs going 12-5. —Schwartz

Best Matchups Through 1st 8 Weeks of NFL Season After 2024 Schedule Release | Bleacher Report

Best Matchup: Kansas City Chiefs at San Francisco 49ers, Sunday, Oct. 20, 4:25 p.m. ET

It doesn’t get better than a Super Bowl rematch. That’s especially true when the Super Bowl in question is one of the greatest of all time.

The Chiefs and Niners played the first Super Bowl to go into overtime last season, with Patrick Mahomes throwing a dagger touchdown to Mecole Hardman in the extra period.

Both franchises have been among the best over the last five years, but Kyle Shanahan’s team hasn’t won a Lombardi Trophy in that span. The Chiefs have beaten them in both of their appearances.

That streak has extended to regular-season games too. The Chiefs beat them in the 2022 regular season as well.

There will be plenty of people tuning in to see if the 49ers can at least snap that streak in the regular season, with a potential Super Bowl rematch coming later in the year.

NFL QB Index: Way-too-early top 10 MVP candidates under center | NFL.com

1 - Patrick Mahomes

Kansas City Chiefs · Caesars odds: +500

If Mahomes is healthy and Kansas City doesn’t fall like the Roman Empire, Mahomes will be in this conversation. Coming off back-to-back Super Bowl titles, the two-time regular-season MVP (2018, 2022) received some much-needed reinforcements this offseason, too, in the form of Marquise Brown and deep threat Xavier Worthy, who the Chiefs traded up for in Round 1 of last month’s draft. Mahomes can never be counted out for this award as long as he’s on the field.

Xavier Worthy’s car was stolen overnight in Kansas City | NBC Sports

Xavier Worthy has been welcomed to Kansas City in a way he didn’t expect.

Per the Chiefs, Worthy’s car was stolen overnight from his apartment complex in town.

As one source put it, the car was stolen from a residential parking garage by a professional group of criminals who “knew exactly what they were doing.”

No one was injured, and there was no carjacking or anything like that. The car was simply stolen.

2024 NFL schedule breakdown for all 32 teams: One good thing and one bad thing each team will face this season | CBS Sports

One bad thing for the Chiefs: As one of the Christmas teams, the Chiefs have to play three games in 10 days starting on Dec. 15 and their stretch is especially brutal since all three of the teams they’ll be facing made the playoffs last season (Browns, Texans, Steelers). Kelce said this week that he likes to get the tough games out of the way early in the season, so he’s probably not thrilled with the span of games.

2024 offseason grades for all 32 NFL teams: Eagles, Chiefs and Bears among teams to get As | PFF

KANSAS CITY CHIEFS: A

The Chiefs didn’t lose Chris Jones and signed Travis Kelce to an extension. Those are two huge offseason wins.

Kansas City also brought in Marquise Brown to up their vertical passing efficiency. They traded away cornerback L’Jarius Sneed, which hurts, but have some young cornerback depth to mitigate that. They also lost Willie Gay.

I loved the Chiefs’ draft, as they were able to select players in Rounds 1-5 who can be starters or contributors.

Despite some of the losses, I think Kansas City came out on top this offseason.

Around the NFL

NFL executive explains Jets-heavy early prime-time schedule | ESPN

“Yes, it’s an awful lot of prime-time games early in the season, but, obviously, I feel like Jets kind of owe us one,” Mike North, the NFL’s vice president of broadcast partners, said on a video conference with reporters.

The Jets have six night games in the first 11 weeks, the most for any team since the 1970 merger, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The NFL and its TV networks went big on the Jets last season — five games in prime time — but it backfired when Rodgers suffered a season-ending Achilles tear in Week 1.

“When we had this conversation a year ago, we were — all of us — all-in on the Jets, and for that guy to last four plays was disheartening for many of us,” North said. “I feel like we could run it back, and certainly our broadcast partners, when they came to us early in the process talking about what storylines they want to focus on early in the season, obviously Aaron Rodgers’ return was a key one for everybody.”

Lions QB Jared Goff: ‘Security,’ no-trade clause were factors in new contract extension | NFL.com

After that experience, Goff said Thursday that his main priority in the new deal was security, which included a no-trade clause that allows him to control his future.

“It was mostly security. I think you can go back and forth on the numbers and whatnot, and that wasn’t really the thing that was ever something I was extremely conferenced with,” Goff told reporters. “It was the security and the no-trade clause and all that stuff, knowing that all that was in there. Feeling secure and then knowing that I can now put that behind me and be excited about what’s to come.”

After taking the Rams to a Super Bowl, Goff’s relationship with Sean McVay soured, and L.A. traded the QB. Since moving to Detroit in 2021, Goff experienced a 3-win first season, a Pro Bowl 2022, and helped the Lions win their first division title in more than 30 years in 2023. For Goff, the contract is the culmination of digging himself out of the low points of his career.

In case you missed it on Arrowhead Pride

Chiefs are now ‘Cowboys-level assets,’ according NFL schedule makers

If the announcement of the 2024 schedule — which sees the Chiefs playing every day of the week except Tuesday — was not evidence enough, NFL broadcast planning vice president Mike North made the point clear during a media call on Thursday morning.

“They’re Cowboys-level assets right now,” he said of the Chiefs. “Knowing that everybody’s going get a certain number of them, being able to pull two Kansas City games out of the mix, put them in a TBD-black box kind of holding spot for the Saturday-Wednesday round robin at the end, we wanted to make sure that we still felt like we could deliver quality Kansas City inventory to NBC.”

As the NFL came to terms with Netflix — which wanted Kansas City as part of its debut package on Christmas Day — schedule-makers had to be sure to appease its familiar partners. North said that to do that, for example, NBC was given three Chiefs games. Those included the season-opener (also an AFC Championship rematch) and two “Sunday Night Football” games.

The league gave ESPN the Chiefs for two “Monday Night Football” games.

“They get a couple of them; they get a division winner in Tampa Bay coming,” North said of the ESPN package. “[ESPN] goes twice to Arrowhead, which is such an incredible experience and venue for our games. Amazon’s getting one — and they really were hoping to see that deployed on Black Friday as they try to continue to build that out.

“FOX [gets] Kansas City-San Francisco. FOX only getting one Kansas City — getting maybe the best Kansas City, arguably, kind of scratches at it for them. That still leaves behind eight Kansas City [games] for CBS, for [Jim] Nantz and [Tony] Romo.”

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