The National Football League has announced the 2017 regular season schedule, matching the defending AFC Western Division champion Kansas City Chiefs with the Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots in the season-opening “Thursday Night Football” game in Foxborough, Massachusetts. The game, scheduled for broadcast on NBC, is slated for Thursday, September 7th.
The game will set up a challenging 16-game run for the Chiefs, who will have six games against AFC West division rivals, including the newly-relocated “Los Angeles” Chargers. Kansas City’s first home game will come against Coach Andy Reid’s former team, the Philadelphia Eagles, on September 17th. It will mark the second meeting for Reid against Philadelphia, following a 26-16 victory at Lincoln Financial Field on September 19, 2013.
Kansas City will travel to Los Angeles to take on the Chargers on September 24th, trying for a seventh-straight victory against the “Bolts”. In a rematch of last year’s AFC Divisional playoff game, the Pittsburgh Steelers pay a visit to Arrowhead Stadium on October 15th, while Kansas City heads south to the city of the franchise’s first years in the AFL, playing the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on November 5th. The game in Texas will be the second of the season for the Chiefs, who play the Texans in Houston on NBC’s Sunday Night Football on October 8th.
The Washington Redskins play the Chiefs at Arrowhead on ESPN’s Monday Night Football October 2nd, with Kansas City playing in back-to-back nationally televised games on October 19th and 30th, first playing the Oakland Raiders in the Bay Area on Thursday Night Football, followed by a visit from the rival Denver Broncos to Arrowhead for Monday Night Football. The final prime-time game for the Chiefs will be Saturday, December 16th, when the L.A. Chargers travel to western Missouri.
The team’s bye week will be November 12th, which is followed by an East Coast trip to play the New York Giants on November 19th. The Chiefs make two trips to the “Big Apple”, playing the Jets on December 3rd. The Buffalo Bills play the Chiefs in KC on November 26th, with three straight home games for the Chiefs scheduled in the run-up to the Christmas Holiday, with Kansas City hosting the Raiders (December 10th) and Dolphins (Christmas Eve), with those games split by the earlier mentioned visit of the Chargers on December 16th.
