The Denver Broncos found out their Week 1 opponent will be the Kansas City Chiefs in a marquee Monday night game.
The NFL is leaking schedule details in advance of a full release, and the Denver Broncos learned that they’ll be defending their divisional title against their biggest rivals right out of the game when they meet the Kansas City Chiefs in the first Monday night game of the season in Week 1, according to a report from Josh Alper of Pro Football Talk along with multiple other outlets.
It’s not hard to see why the league made this selection. This was going to be a marquee game whenever it happened, so why not feature it right away given all the headlines it will undoubtedly generate?
There will also be plenty of juicy storylines, with the two biggest ones revolving around the quarterbacks. Both Bo Nix and Patrick Mahomes will be coming off serious injuries, and their respective recovery timelines will be an integral part of what happens in this game.
Nix’s status has been the source of some controversy. The quarterback broke his ankle against the Buffalo Bills in the divisional round of the playoffs, and coach Sean Payton created a controversy by saying Nix was “predisposed” to the injury. The Broncos have been walking back his comments and changing Nix’s timeline to return to the field ever since, so we still don’t know how that’s going to play out.
Mahomes, meanwhile, is coming off a serious ACL/LCL tear, but he’s pushing hard to return to the field. He’s said numerous times that he wants to play in Week 1, and the Chiefs have offered an optimistic but tempered take on this, saying that he’s ahead of schedule.
The Broncos will be fielding a mostly similar team in this one, Nix’s status aside. They made a big trade for receiver Jaylen Waddle, but the offseason focus in Denver was on player retention, although the Broncos will have a new offensive coordinator, Davis Webb, for this one.
Quarterback situations aside, the NFL is taking a big risk with this scheduling move. This game is going to lose a lot of its shine if either quarterback isn’t taking snaps, and there’s no way to know if that’s going to happen until well into the summer.
The Broncos beat the Chiefs twice last season, and the first one was huge. It was a tight 22-19 win at home as Denver finally took down Mahomes, and after that Kansas City toppled out of the running. The site hasn’t been announced yet, but this game is a headline-generator, and that’s a big part of what the NFL is about when it comes to releasing the schedule.