NFL Explains Reason For Bears’ Odds Of Division; a three-game road trip originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
The Bears’ 2024 schedule arrived Wednesday and featured a few notable oddities, including the Bears not playing a divisional game until Week 11 against the Green Bay Packers.
Six of the Bears’ last eight games have been against NFC North opponents. Meanwhile, the other three teams in the division each play two NFC North games prior to Week 11. But the Bears aren’t alone in this strange divisional schedule, as the Pittsburgh Steelers also don’t play a divisional game until Week 11.
On Thursday, NFL Vice President of Broadcast Planning Mike North discussed why the Bears’ schedule came up with the unusual division list.
“It was certainly not our intention not to play division games [in the early part of the season],” North said during a video conference call with reporters. “It feels like a college basketball schedule, non-conference games first. It wasn’t intentional, but it wasn’t necessarily something we looked at and thought was unfair.”
North noted that the NFL has always preferred to hold divisional games late in the season to maximize drama.
“There is a legacy of the [former senior vice president of broadcasting and media operations] Howard Katz has led the scheduling process for years: They are late-season division games. It’s always something we look for, and it only gets forced in week 18. More division games late in the season usually means fewer teams have clinched a playoff spot.”
North said the league will likely look at such an extreme divisional schedule next season.
Charlotte Carey, the NFL’s director of broadcasts, noted on “Up and Adams” that because both the AFC and NFC North are such exciting and fiercely competitive divisions, the NFL was okay with filling the back end of the schedule with those matches.
Another oddity in the Bears’ schedule occurs in weeks 10-15, when they play three straight home games, followed by three straight games in Detroit, San Francisco and Minnesota. The Vikings have the opposite in the same period: three away, three at home.
North doesn’t view the Bears’ Detroit-San Francisco-Minnesota trifecta as a negative because of the rest between games.
“We talk about three-game road trips like it’s the worst thing you can do to a team,” North said. ‘I’m not sure that’s true. I think sometimes it’s about who you play, isn’t it? We could cut someone’s three-game road trip short by taking away that third road game and giving him a home game against Kansas City or San Francisco. Is that really better?
“You think about this three-game road trip for the Bears from a competitive standpoint, the first being Thanksgiving. Then you get that 10 day break before that second match. And then the third game is on Monday evening. So you basically get extra days between Games 1 and 2 and then 2 and 3. I hope they don’t look at that schedule and think it was unfair.”
The Bears will play four preseason games, including the Hall of Fame Game against the Houston Texans on August 1. They open the season against the Tennessee Titans at Soldier Field on September 8.
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