Speaker 1: We were presented by win Bet Betty's a team sport,
Speaker 1: but together at win Bet, Eric Allen here at one
Speaker 1: Jets Drive, joined by the National Football Leagues Vice President
Speaker 1: of Broadcast Planning.
Speaker 2: That is the one, the only Mike North.
Speaker 1: How good does it feel to finally put the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three NFL schedule to bed? Uh?
Speaker 3: Certainly glad it's over.
Speaker 4: It was a bit of a death march there down
Speaker 4: the stretch, but look really happy with how it came out.
Speaker 4: Still kind of bracing for reactions today and tomorrow. The
Speaker 4: teams all got their schedules on Wednesday. The network partners
Speaker 4: got them Thursday morning. Most of the reaction was as expected,
Speaker 4: mostly positive. But look, the only reactions the matter of
Speaker 4: the fans. So let's see what happens on Thursday night
Speaker 4: when everybody gets their schedules and gets a chance to look.
Speaker 3: At them on a daylight. Today, you know, you only
Speaker 3: see your own schedule.
Speaker 4: Then tomorrow you see everybody else's and that's when, hey,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, I thought I was good, but now
Speaker 4: I'm not as good as I thought I was.
Speaker 3: That's when the phone starts ringing.
Speaker 4: So still bracing for some feedback for the next twenty
Speaker 4: four hours or so.
Speaker 1: Mike, at this point last year we talked about it
Speaker 1: and you said, you have to earn your way into
Speaker 1: prime time. How did the New York Jets earn their
Speaker 1: way into primetime in twenty twenty three? Five primetime games
Speaker 1: plus the NFL's first ever black Frida again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Look, that was a good football team last year.
Speaker 4: I know the maybe quarterback play was disappointing, but what
Speaker 4: rookie of the year. I mean, it's a good football team.
Speaker 4: You certainly were going to find yourselves on national television
Speaker 4: quite a bit anyway. You just think about the schedule
Speaker 4: that you had, whether it was Philadelphia or Kansas City
Speaker 4: or any of the division opponents. Trading for a four
Speaker 4: time NFL MVP, future first ballot Hall of Famer, that's
Speaker 4: another way to find yourself on the national television schedule. So, look,
Speaker 4: the Jets, we're gonna be well represented in national windows. Obviously,
Speaker 4: signing Rogers kind of up the any a little bit
Speaker 4: and maybe went from let's say two or three to
Speaker 4: closer to five or six. And then you throw in
Speaker 4: some four to twenty five double header games on Sunday afternoon,
Speaker 4: and yeah, there's gonna be a lot of Jets on
Speaker 4: national television.
Speaker 3: Please please be good.
Speaker 1: So what was the Jets watch specifically like for you
Speaker 1: a man in your position as far as they're tracking
Speaker 1: Aaron Rodgers throughout the offseason, as I'm sure you guys were,
Speaker 1: because you have to put that schedule together. And on
Speaker 1: March fifteenth, what clicks maybe as far as the communications
Speaker 1: internally for you guys when he gets on the Pat
Speaker 1: McAfee's show and says, my attention is to play in
Speaker 1: the National Football League in twenty twenty three, and it's
Speaker 1: to play with the Jets.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that day was, Hey, why don't we stop the
Speaker 4: computers for just a couple of minutes and I'll talk
Speaker 4: to each other. Like we said, some of these two
Speaker 4: hundred and seventy two assets were worth you know, this much,
Speaker 4: and if Aaron Rodgers is your quarterback, those assets might
Speaker 4: be worth this much. And certainly if you're going to
Speaker 4: play against Kansas City and we were lucky enough to
Speaker 4: get ourselves, you know, another Mahomes Rogers games, since we
Speaker 4: lost it right when he had COVID last year or
Speaker 4: two years ago. It's it's good to it was good
Speaker 4: for us to be able to take a moment stop, reevaluate.
Speaker 4: Part of this, you know, we talked about it last year.
Speaker 4: It's part art and part science. You know, the gut,
Speaker 4: the feel, the instincts, what game would I.
Speaker 3: Want to watch?
Speaker 4: What sounds like a football game? But there's some science
Speaker 4: to it too, and we're trying to do some predictive analytics.
Speaker 4: Who's going to be good, who's going to be in
Speaker 4: a playoff chase, which of these matchups tend to produce
Speaker 4: good games? And obviously which of these games do we
Speaker 4: think are going to generate the higher viewership for our fans.
Speaker 4: So the predictive analytics had to shift a little bit
Speaker 4: as the social media buzz as everybody started talking about
Speaker 4: Rogers to the Jets, Rogers to the Jets, everybody was
Speaker 4: just a little bit more interested in some of those
Speaker 4: Jets games. So sort of a one day stop and
Speaker 4: restart and reevaluate and if he is going to be
Speaker 4: a Jet, wouldn't it be great if we did this
Speaker 4: or that, or we can't do this now, and we
Speaker 4: got to make sure we do something like that later.
Speaker 4: And then it kind of dragged on a bit, didn't it.
Speaker 3: Really.
Speaker 4: At some point we started to wonder, hey, if we
Speaker 4: get through draft and a deal doesn't get done, is
Speaker 4: there a chance this doesn't happen? And if it doesn't happen,
Speaker 4: should we maybe rethink some of the decisions that we'd
Speaker 4: already kind of committed to. So there was a call
Speaker 4: it a hedge your bet plan if he hadn't gotten
Speaker 4: the deal done and then the teams hadn't worked out
Speaker 4: the trade compensation. But grateful that they did and we
Speaker 4: were able to stay on track and maybe even push
Speaker 4: it just a little bit further. When you think about,
Speaker 4: you know, the Monday night game in week one, or
Speaker 4: Black Friday like we talked about, or the two Sundays
Speaker 4: or the two Espens, there's there's an awful lot of
Speaker 4: really good Jets games, and if he stays healthy and
Speaker 4: the Jets stay relevant, I think it's going to be
Speaker 4: really good for our fans.
Speaker 1: What was your reaction Monday afternoon, three days prior to
Speaker 1: the draft, when Adams after took to social media and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: the trade is done. The Jets and the Packers have
Speaker 1: agreed to terms. The trade actually becomes official the next day,
Speaker 1: two days prior to the draft.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a definite sense of relief, and strangely enough,
Speaker 4: happened to coincide really quickly, right with Lamar Jackson signings
Speaker 4: to you in Baltimore. So you talk about two of
Speaker 4: the kind of open issues that we had, they got
Speaker 4: wrapped up for us, I think within twenty four hours
Speaker 4: of each other, and that was great for us to
Speaker 4: be able to kind of take that trepidation away. Don't
Speaker 4: have to worry so much anymore. Now we can just
Speaker 4: really grind forward and continue on the path that we
Speaker 4: were on and try to land this plane from May eleven.
Speaker 1: Why Jets Bills in week one? And also, can you
Speaker 1: talk about the significance of having a New York team
Speaker 1: host the game twenty two years after nine to eleven.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Look, obviously we knew the date on the calendar,
Speaker 4: and we certainly thought it appropriate. At least one of
Speaker 4: the New York teams was playing on Monday night. We
Speaker 4: actually talked about having both of them play. I reached
Speaker 4: out to the Jets and to the Giants, knowing that
Speaker 4: they're playing each other in week three of the preseason,
Speaker 4: would they be comfortable from a football standpoint turning around
Speaker 4: and playing each other again just a couple of weeks
Speaker 4: later when accounts and to their credit, both teams said, yep, absolutely,
Speaker 4: if that's the right thing for the league, we will
Speaker 4: do it. So we absolutely considered some schedules that had
Speaker 4: Jets Giants as the Monday night or a Week one.
Speaker 4: This is probably more than you're asking, but as we
Speaker 4: tried to solve the Week one puzzle, you know, obviously
Speaker 4: Kansas City was going to play on kickoff, and any
Speaker 4: Kansas City game would have been great television. There was
Speaker 4: a must c TV right now. The next two probably
Speaker 4: most interesting, you know, most likely to generate significant viewership opportunities,
Speaker 4: was going to be any Dallas Cowboys game and Aaron
Speaker 4: Rodgers first game is a Jet. And what we have
Speaker 4: in Week one, as you know, is the double doubleheader
Speaker 4: for CBS and Fox, So they both have four to
Speaker 4: twenty five Eastern Time double header games. That means every
Speaker 4: fan in the country gets four games on the opening
Speaker 4: Sunday of the season. What we try to do is
Speaker 4: balance the for CBS and Fox. You don't want anybody
Speaker 4: to be too high or too low. You want CBS
Speaker 4: and Fox to sort of split the baby in Week one.
Speaker 4: If one of them was gonna get Dallas, then the
Speaker 4: other one was probably gonna have a tough time keeping up.
Speaker 4: And if one of them was gonna get the Jets,
Speaker 4: then the other one was probably gonna have a tough
Speaker 4: time keeping up. So it stood the reason for us
Speaker 4: that once you got Kansas City on kickoff, have about
Speaker 4: Dallas in one primetime window and the Jets in the
Speaker 4: other primetime window. And what we came around was talking
Speaker 4: with our friends at NBC and ESPN. You know, Dallas
Speaker 4: Giants Sunday night at week one seems to be a staple.
Speaker 4: We've definitely done that before. And then with the Jets,
Speaker 4: you know, you can do Aaron Rodgers first game on
Speaker 4: Monday night. He's got the whole day to himself, so
Speaker 4: you get the kind of the ESPN hype machine starting
Speaker 4: in the morning with the talk shows, all throughout the
Speaker 4: day with the radio and the podcast and the website
Speaker 4: and everything else, just kind of pointing towards you know,
Speaker 4: Aaron first game as a Jet. Love the idea of
Speaker 4: like the whole country focused on that one. You do
Speaker 4: it on Sunday night, and you've got eight or seven
Speaker 4: games earlier in the day, and you're just kind of
Speaker 4: squeezing in at the back end this one, you kind
Speaker 4: of get that whole day kind of focused on his
Speaker 4: first game. What did he look like in the preseason?
Speaker 4: Did he even play in the preseason? You know, I
Speaker 4: love the idea of having a New York home game
Speaker 4: and Aaron's first game, and of course playing Josh Allen
Speaker 4: and the Bills. I mean, every division game in the
Speaker 4: AFC East now means just a little bit more, and
Speaker 4: so having one of those Week one is great, and
Speaker 4: you come back with the other Bills Jets game, you know,
Speaker 4: a couple of months later, also in a national window
Speaker 4: at four to twenty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as a guy who works there in the city
Speaker 1: and lives around here, what do you think the environment's
Speaker 1: going to be like at MetLife And how big of.
Speaker 2: A stage is that the Jets And what does it say.
Speaker 1: About how far they've come that they will be playing
Speaker 1: Monday night football standalone game against the Bills in Week one.
Speaker 4: Look, every city in the country just feels bigger, feels buzzier.
Speaker 4: People are happier when the football team's good. So certainly
Speaker 4: here in New York we got two football teams, and
Speaker 4: there was that stretch there through what about October mid
Speaker 4: November where they were both good last year and everybody
Speaker 4: started getting sighted. Reminded me of the days whatever it
Speaker 4: was fifteen twenty years ago, when we got into December
Speaker 4: and it was pretty obvious they were both going to
Speaker 4: make the playoffs, and we started talking about, Hey, what
Speaker 4: happens if they're both both hosting championship games? Right like
Speaker 4: he was on Saturday, one Sunday, one Sunday, one Monday.
Speaker 4: I'd love for that to be a conversation again. That
Speaker 4: would be a fantastic problem for the NFL to have
Speaker 4: the Jets and Giants both being good. It's good for
Speaker 4: the NFL, It's good for our media partners, obviously the
Speaker 4: biggest market in the country. You know, the schedule makers
Speaker 4: look smarter when the Jets and Giants and Rams and
Speaker 4: Chargers and Cowboys and Bears and Niners all are playing well.
Speaker 4: That might be a little out of our hands, but
Speaker 4: certainly hope to take advantage of it if we can.
Speaker 1: How about the thought process going into week two, the
Speaker 1: Jets coming off the short week, going to Dallas, where
Speaker 1: there are a couple iterations from the computer that spit
Speaker 1: out the Jets maybe playing prime time at some point
Speaker 1: with Dallas and why was the double header windle the
Speaker 1: way to go for you guys.
Speaker 4: Yeah, look to us, the Sunday afternoon doubleheader window on
Speaker 4: CBS and Fox, the Sunday night games, the Monday night games,
Speaker 4: even the Thursday night games now on Amazon, those are
Speaker 4: all big windows for us. Those are all good landing
Speaker 4: spots for our best games. You know, we've got the
Speaker 4: Jewish Holidays in there in weeks two and three. So
Speaker 4: trying to manage the Jets and Giants fans who should
Speaker 4: be home and at what time just didn't really feel
Speaker 4: right to have the Jets come off of that big
Speaker 4: Monday night game and then turn around and play a
Speaker 4: one o'clock Sunday afternoon game that might only be available
Speaker 4: in fifteen percent of the country. What if Rogers has
Speaker 4: a monster game and throw us for four hundred yards
Speaker 4: and four touchdowns and he's the biggest story in the league,
Speaker 4: and then you turn around a week two and you
Speaker 4: don't get to tell that story because there's eight other
Speaker 4: games going on at the same time. So thinking about
Speaker 4: how to you know, manage the stadium, managed the fans,
Speaker 4: managed the television partners, and look, certainly his first couple
Speaker 4: of games are gonna be unbelievably interesting. You know, everybody's
Speaker 4: going to tune in for week one and then week two.
Speaker 4: Can he keep it going? Can he rebound? Like it
Speaker 4: all depends on what he does in week one, So
Speaker 4: finding a national television home for that one as well.
Speaker 4: That Jets Dallas game was at the top of our
Speaker 4: friends at CBS's wish list, and they were really happy
Speaker 4: to get it.
Speaker 1: And he thought at all as far as the Jets
Speaker 1: on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 4: Yeah, certainly thought about Thanksgiving. Couldn't do Black Friday relative
Speaker 4: to you know, the Cowboys always playing on Thursday, but
Speaker 4: definitely oh that's right. Yeah, definitely looked at schedules where
Speaker 4: the Jets were at the Cowboys on Thanksgiving. But Thanksgiving
Speaker 4: for you know, a dozen years now has always been
Speaker 4: that Cowboys four thirty Eastern time Thanksgiving game almost universally
Speaker 4: our most watched game of the season. It's just become
Speaker 4: a tradition. That's what we all do. And you know, you,
Speaker 4: me and nine friends could probably go play Dallas that
Speaker 4: day and twenty million people will watch better if somebody
Speaker 4: other than that goes in there. And we sent the
Speaker 4: Giants in there last year. Remember at this time last year.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure anybody was expecting much out of the Giants,
Speaker 4: right they were off a relatively disappointing season. So having
Speaker 4: the Giants go to Dallas last season do whatever it was,
Speaker 4: forty two forty three million viewers kind of showed us,
Speaker 4: you know, we always knew there was a floor that
Speaker 4: might have showed us where the ceiling was. Like, you
Speaker 4: could really generate a pretty significant viewership number on Thanksgiving
Speaker 4: if you're lucky enough to get a big team with
Speaker 4: a big national following, and they thankfully could play a
Speaker 4: game that's decided in the final drive of the game,
Speaker 4: Like that's that's a recipe for good viewership. So we
Speaker 4: looked at Jets Dallas on Thanksgiving. We looked at Philly,
Speaker 4: didn't really want to send New York back there. Again,
Speaker 4: I'm not sure mister Marraw would have loved that. We
Speaker 4: talked about the Rams, we talked about Seattle obviously landed
Speaker 4: on Washington. Just felt like that Jets Dallas game could
Speaker 4: have a home where it could generate maybe a higher
Speaker 4: ceiling than you know, taking Thanksgiving from here to here
Speaker 4: as opposed to taking a Sunday afternoon when from here
Speaker 4: to here. So that's sort of how we ended up
Speaker 4: kind of deploying it that way. But we looked at
Speaker 4: schedules where the Jets Cowboys game was Sunday night, was
Speaker 4: Monday night, was Thanksgiving? Was a Fox doubleheader, was a
Speaker 4: CVS doubleheader. It was one of those kind of you know,
Speaker 4: five tool utility players.
Speaker 3: It could have gone anywhere.
Speaker 1: What about Week four and that enticing matchup between the
Speaker 1: Jets and the Kansas City Chiefs? In your mind, was
Speaker 1: that always going to go towards the spotlight that is
Speaker 1: Sunday Night Football.
Speaker 4: Yeah, again, it's one of those five tool utility players.
Speaker 4: It could have gone anywhere, and was certainly considered it
Speaker 4: in a lot of other places. But you know, that
Speaker 4: was definitely a game that needed to find a home
Speaker 4: somewhere on the primetime schedule and these last couple of years. Strangely,
Speaker 4: I'm not sure it was intentional, but it's kind of
Speaker 4: like developed that way that that final Sunday in September
Speaker 4: on NBC on Sunday Night Football. We've landed with a
Speaker 4: couple of really big games in there, and for whatever
Speaker 4: else NBC has going on, whether it's you know, a
Speaker 4: college football game or a NASCAR race or I think
Speaker 4: this they've gotten the Ryder Cup like it. Just there's
Speaker 4: a promotional engine, a marketing opportunity around that final Sunday
Speaker 4: in September. And a couple of years ago was Tom
Speaker 4: Brady's return. We did Tampa Bay at New England and
Speaker 4: they did that Adell song for the promo, which was
Speaker 4: pretty cool. And then last year it was Mahomes again
Speaker 4: it was Mahomes and Brady, it was Casey Tampa and
Speaker 4: just that sort of has become almost like a high
Speaker 4: watermark for us on opportunity that kind of fourth Sunday
Speaker 4: in September, that that fourth Sunday of the season and
Speaker 4: to see Kansas City Jets kind of land right in
Speaker 4: there felt like a really good opportunity. Again, you could
Speaker 4: have done it a little earlier, but you're getting into
Speaker 4: the Jewish holidays. You get a little later, and who knows,
Speaker 4: we might be up against the Yankees postseason game, which
Speaker 4: isn't really fair to the fan in New York. So
Speaker 4: you want to try to make sure that everybody can
Speaker 4: see all the good games. You wait too long and
Speaker 4: maybe you missed your moment, right, what if Heaven forbid
Speaker 4: somebody got hurt or somebody's scuffing a little bit and
Speaker 4: isn't having the season you wanted, So you kind of
Speaker 4: try to guess, like we all do. It's may none
Speaker 4: of us know what the season is going to develop
Speaker 4: in September, no less December. So that's sort of week four.
Speaker 4: Hopefully all the storylines remain. And yeah, Mahomes and Rogers
Speaker 4: on the same field together, sounds like a football game.
Speaker 3: I want to watch.
Speaker 1: The Jets twenty twenty three schedule is out now see
Speaker 1: Aaron Rodgers and the Jets host some of the best
Speaker 1: in the National Football League, including Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts,
Speaker 1: Josh Allen Moore. Locking your tickets at yjets dot com
Speaker 1: slash tickets. So those guys have combined for six NFL MVPs,
Speaker 1: three Super Bowl MVPs, and three championships, and they both
Speaker 1: figure to be in the running for another ring this year.
Speaker 1: That one is going to be a must see. What
Speaker 1: about the back to back prime times for the Jets
Speaker 1: after the bye you got La Chargers, Justin Herbert coming
Speaker 1: to My Life night Special, and then the short week
Speaker 1: to turn around and you have a Sunday night game
Speaker 1: in the Sin City.
Speaker 2: The Jets going to Vegas for the first time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can't tell you how many people have asked me, Hey,
Speaker 4: can you tell me when that Chess Raiders game is that?
Speaker 4: That's the one everybody's kind of got circled on their calendars,
Speaker 4: and you know the fact that it falls in a
Speaker 4: primetime slide. Man, let's make a weekend out of it.
Speaker 4: Maybe stay till Monday calling sick. I love that idea. Look,
Speaker 4: those late games are an interesting challenge for us. As
Speaker 4: you know, we play the bulk of our game Sunday
Speaker 4: at one o'clock, and you've got some of those late games,
Speaker 4: and if they're not the four to twenty five double
Speaker 4: header game on CBS or Fox, then they're either in
Speaker 4: a window with another double header game. So you might have,
Speaker 4: you know, Jets Vegas at four to twenty five with
Speaker 4: making it up Cincinnati Kansas City, right then the Jets
Speaker 4: fans don't get to see that Bengals Chiefs game. On
Speaker 4: the alternative side, if you don't land at four twenty five,
Speaker 4: you're gonna land at four five, and then you're on
Speaker 4: the single header network. And then in New York, yes,
Speaker 4: you could see both, but you're competing with each other
Speaker 4: and that's probably not good for either partner either, So
Speaker 4: trying to find that right landing spot for some of
Speaker 4: those Western games. Now that those Western teams are so good,
Speaker 4: right the Chargers, the Raiders, the Seahawks, the Niners, any
Speaker 4: of the New York teams. Right, New York's going out
Speaker 4: to San the Giants are going out to San Francisco,
Speaker 4: the Jets are going out to the Raiders. I mean,
Speaker 4: need to find good homes for those and primetime does
Speaker 4: make a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: Is that huge for you guys from a league perspective,
Speaker 1: Like you're talking about the coast to coast, I mean,
Speaker 1: you got La market, New York market, and obviously there's
Speaker 1: our national brands, especially the Jets with Aaron Rodgers now
Speaker 1: at this point, and then the following week Raiders, the
Speaker 1: historic franchise paired up with the Jets and their future
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame quarterback and a team that's on the
Speaker 1: rise you mentioned before, a lot of young talent here
Speaker 1: and Robert Salad doing very good things here in his
Speaker 1: third year.
Speaker 3: Yep, love it, love it. I mean look at it.
Speaker 4: Like I said, it makes the schedule makers look smart
Speaker 4: when you know teams with national followings from major media markets,
Speaker 4: really big cities are playing well and playing interesting and compelling,
Speaker 4: and you know, games of playoff implications down the stretch.
Speaker 4: We'll take all that we can. We root for all
Speaker 4: thirty two equally, of course here in the big you know,
Speaker 4: palette halls. But yeah, having the two New York teams
Speaker 4: competitive helps in a lot of way. It's not just
Speaker 4: our national television partnerships, but also here in New York
Speaker 4: you guys know, you know, most weeks, if we're not
Speaker 4: as competitive as we hoped, you're going to see Jets
Speaker 4: and Giants games both at one o'clock, so that we
Speaker 4: can get that big Cincinnati Kansas City or Philly Dallas
Speaker 4: game or whatever it is into the market at four
Speaker 4: twenty five. Having more of those Giants and Jets games
Speaker 4: deployed across four twenty five Thursday night, Sunday nights, Monday
Speaker 4: nights should alleviate some of that one o'clock you know,
Speaker 4: conflict between Jets and Giants games, so the fans in
Speaker 4: New York should be able to watch both teams every weekend.
Speaker 2: Why Black Friday for the NFL? Why was that a
Speaker 2: big step for the league?
Speaker 1: And also can you talk about you guys selecting the
Speaker 1: Jets and the Dolphins, the two longtime division rivals to
Speaker 1: go head to head.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Look, Black Friday is gonna be a first for us.
Speaker 4: Haven't done that before. Our friends at Amazon were really eager.
Speaker 4: You know, obviously it's a big retail day and they
Speaker 4: are certainly a big retail partner, so that's sort of
Speaker 4: their super Bowl.
Speaker 3: And if you think.
Speaker 4: About everybody going to Amazon that day and you put
Speaker 4: a little button right next to the checkout button and like, hey,
Speaker 4: before you check out, click here, They're gonna move that
Speaker 4: game in front of the paywall.
Speaker 3: So you don't need Amazon Prime.
Speaker 4: All you need is an Internet connection and everybody's gonna
Speaker 4: be able to watch that game. It's a you know,
Speaker 4: there's not a lot of windows where you know, you
Speaker 4: could put an NFL game that we haven't already, so.
Speaker 3: That was one of them.
Speaker 4: And you know that weekend is such a big sports weekend, right,
Speaker 4: we have such a big day on Thursday with three
Speaker 4: games on Thanksgiving. We always come back with what we
Speaker 4: hope is a really good doubleheader, a good Sunday night
Speaker 4: or a good Monday night. There's usually some really good
Speaker 4: college football on Saturday that weekend, So you know, that
Speaker 4: Friday afternoon sort of felt like maybe an itch we
Speaker 4: could scratch something for our fans to have a little
Speaker 4: opportunity to go watch another big game. And again, it's
Speaker 4: a game that otherwise would have been deployed on a
Speaker 4: Sunday afternoon. And you think about a Jets Dolphins game,
Speaker 4: the historic rivalry and now with Rogers and Tua, you know,
Speaker 4: that's a game it feels like more people should be
Speaker 4: able to see, as opposed to win a one o'clock
Speaker 4: window and kind of landlocked if there's a Patriots game
Speaker 4: with it, or an Eagles game with it, or a
Speaker 4: Browns game with it. So getting that game into a
Speaker 4: national window Black Friday is going to be really fun.
Speaker 4: I know Amazon's really excited about it and wanted to
Speaker 4: kind of find that right sort of divisional game maybe
Speaker 4: in year one. Those games always matter no matter when
Speaker 4: we play them. We happen to have three divisional games
Speaker 4: on Thanksgiving Thursday this year, so come back with a
Speaker 4: fourth divisional game on Black Friday should make for a
Speaker 4: really fun couple of days.
Speaker 1: What about the Jets' final prime time game against the
Speaker 1: Cleveland Browns that Thursday Night affair. I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you about four short weeks for the Jets. I think
Speaker 1: that would make you smile at this point because I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've been dealing with this question from teams like
Speaker 1: Kansas City or the Packers for years. That's that's the
Speaker 1: price of being good now, right, the expectations Now you
Speaker 1: are gonna have short weeks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're gonna have short weeks. You're gonna play in
Speaker 4: non traditional windows. You're you're not gonna play Sunday afternoon
Speaker 4: at one o'clock year after year. And I don't think
Speaker 4: there's any Jets fans, certainly no Jets player or coach
Speaker 4: or or an owner who's gonna want to go back
Speaker 4: to that, because you know, generally that's indicative of, you know,
Speaker 4: the success still to come. So the fact that you
Speaker 4: know the Jets were coming, they were getting better, they
Speaker 4: were right there last year. They're a good football team
Speaker 4: with a lot of good pieces. You had a four
Speaker 4: time MVP. You you certainly are gonna find yourself in
Speaker 4: more national television windows. The short week from Monday to Sunday.
Speaker 4: That happens all the time. Right, we played Monday, We've
Speaker 4: been playing Monday night football for fifty years. You know,
Speaker 4: Monday to Sunday is a thing in this league. And
Speaker 4: generally speaking, the data, the analytics don't really show that
Speaker 4: they're that much of an advantage for a one day
Speaker 4: rest disparity. The short weeks on Thursday. You know, it's
Speaker 4: only been a few years that we've had this full
Speaker 4: season of Thursday, so we're all still kind of learning.
Speaker 4: It's a limited data set, but we're keeping an eye
Speaker 4: on it. But when ownership voted last month to allow
Speaker 4: teams to play multiple short weeks like this, multiple games
Speaker 4: on a Thursday, this gives us the opportunity to put
Speaker 4: a team like the Jets, a team like the Steelers,
Speaker 4: a team like the Bears on two short weeks, you know,
Speaker 4: still cognizant about where they are. They shouldn't be too
Speaker 4: close together, and we should spread them out. We should
Speaker 4: have the bye week in there somewhere. They should get,
Speaker 4: you know, the mini bye after both Thursdays, plus the
Speaker 4: full bye week, and hopefully those have been staggered, you know,
Speaker 4: in enough of a way that you know, guys can
Speaker 4: get their rest, guys can recover, and yeah, we met
Speaker 4: with our friends at Amazon this morning, and you know,
Speaker 4: one of the highlights of their schedule is seeing two
Speaker 4: Jets games on Amazon. That sends a pretty good message
Speaker 4: to their partners and to their advertisers.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to stop you here, Mike, but the
Speaker 1: Jets play ten of their first fifteen games at Mettlife Stadium.
Speaker 1: That's sixty seven percent of games. Do you think that's
Speaker 1: ever happened before? Because you got the nine home you
Speaker 1: got the nine home games, and then you have the
Speaker 1: Giants game where technically the Jets are the visitor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, can't think of another time.
Speaker 4: I mean maybe the last time the Jets and Giants
Speaker 4: played each other, and it went that way for the
Speaker 4: Giants four years ago. But no, that's a look, that's
Speaker 4: one of those quirks where, you know, people always talk
Speaker 4: about it's a rotational based schedule. So you know, right now,
Speaker 4: fourteen of your seventeen games for the next you know,
Speaker 4: twenty four years until we change something, so you know
Speaker 4: most of your games already, and it just so happens that,
Speaker 4: you know, we saw it last year where you know, well,
Speaker 4: I think it's the NFC East, like you end up
Speaker 4: pairing up with divisions that maybe you might be a
Speaker 4: little down, and not that anybody fattens up on anybody
Speaker 4: in this league, but you know, you know the rotation. Now,
Speaker 4: you might be running into this division when they're all
Speaker 4: really good and everybody's five hundred or better. You might
Speaker 4: also be running into a division where everybody's kind of
Speaker 4: resetting and rebuilding. And you know, the good news at
Speaker 4: least is that it's gonna be the same for everybody
Speaker 4: in the division. So to the extent that the Jets
Speaker 4: are playing, you know this division or that division, so
Speaker 4: are the Dolphins, so are the Patriots, so are the Bills.
Speaker 4: So you don't get that wild fluctuation. There's only three
Speaker 4: games now that are standings based, and even that kind
Speaker 4: of changes. Right, Sometimes you run into a standings based
Speaker 4: game that you say, hey, that team was much better
Speaker 4: than their standings last year. And other times you catch
Speaker 4: a fourth place guy and you're like, they got really
Speaker 4: good or they traded for a you know, four time
Speaker 4: MVP quarterback. So there's only a couple of games that
Speaker 4: are impacted by the standings now, those ones versus ones,
Speaker 4: and the rest.
Speaker 3: Of them are known, you know, years and years in advance.
Speaker 4: Just so happened that this one happened to coincide the
Speaker 4: Jets with a road game met life against the Giants.
Speaker 4: You'd hope they take advantage of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fascinating because you got the nine home games
Speaker 1: and you're done with your home games after week fifteen
Speaker 1: or week sixteen this year, I should say, because obviously
Speaker 1: you finish up with Cleveland and then New England. How
Speaker 1: about we talked about the Jets playing primetime and being
Speaker 1: in that doubleheader window this year. I mean, I believe
Speaker 1: the Jets are in the four o'clock hour six times.
Speaker 1: And then the interesting thing about the way they close, Mike,
Speaker 1: you have in December for those people who do like
Speaker 1: the one o'clock starts, it's Atlanta one o'clock, Houston one o'clock,
Speaker 1: at Miami one o'clock, Washington at home one o'clock, and
Speaker 1: then at Cleveland at New England. So fans who are
Speaker 1: into the one o'clock start and want to bring their
Speaker 1: families out, you're gonna be able to partake in that
Speaker 1: in December.
Speaker 3: Here with an asterisk, right, that's what too with an ask.
Speaker 4: So you know, we have certainly put an awful lot
Speaker 4: of Jets games on national television and in primetime, but
Speaker 4: there's there's still room.
Speaker 3: For one more.
Speaker 4: So you know, if you find yourself where Houston or
Speaker 4: Atlanta or Washington is maybe a little bit better than
Speaker 4: folks are projecting right now, and you get to December
Speaker 4: and like we said, Aaron Rodgers is throwing for four
Speaker 4: thousand yards and fifty touchdowns, and you know, the Jets
Speaker 4: are in the mix for the division and a one seed.
Speaker 3: You know, finding one.
Speaker 4: More national television game for the Jets wouldn't be uh,
Speaker 4: you know, outside the box wouldn't be ye much the question.
Speaker 2: No doubt.
Speaker 1: But as we stand here today, only one of their
Speaker 1: games could be flexed, well, one of their games can
Speaker 1: be flexed because they've already reached the maximum on the
Speaker 1: Thursday nights.
Speaker 4: So you don't even we don't even have flexible scheduling
Speaker 4: yet for Thursday nights. You know, owner discussed it, I
Speaker 4: should say, a month ago, and they may discuss it
Speaker 4: again in Minneapolis in a couple of weeks. So there's
Speaker 4: there's no flex yet for Thursday. If there were to
Speaker 4: become flexible scheduling for Thursday, the Jets wouldn't be eligible
Speaker 4: to move to another Thursday they've already got there two
Speaker 4: short weeks, but there's still room for another Jets game
Speaker 4: to move to a Sunday night. We've got flexible scheduling
Speaker 4: now for the first time for Monday night. But as
Speaker 4: you look at the schedule, I don't think the league
Speaker 4: was you know, reckless or you know, too risky with
Speaker 4: some of those Sunday night and Monday night games late
Speaker 4: in the year. We're not looking to flex with any
Speaker 4: you know, good fortune. The crystal ball was clear, and
Speaker 4: the games that we chose for those primetime windows in
Speaker 4: December are going to have playoff implications and we're going
Speaker 4: to keep them right where we scheduled them. But you know,
Speaker 4: you never know. That's the way this league works. And
Speaker 4: if you find yourself with a game in primetime between
Speaker 4: two teams that just aren't having the season that they
Speaker 4: had hoped to, we're not doing them any favors by
Speaker 4: leaving them in a national window. We're not doing their
Speaker 4: fans any favors asking them to come out at night,
Speaker 4: and we're not doing you know, the rest of the
Speaker 4: country any favors having this be our primetime game, especially
Speaker 4: if there's a good game sitting there. You know, at
Speaker 4: one o'clock or four o'clock on a Sunday with a
Speaker 4: bunch of other games around it that you might not
Speaker 4: be able to see it otherwise. So let's take that
Speaker 4: game out a Sunday afternoon, move it in on a
Speaker 4: national window. Those teams have played their way into additional
Speaker 4: primetime exposure, and we'll take the two teams who were
Speaker 4: originally scheduled for the night time and we're moving back
Speaker 4: to Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 3: Better for them, better for their fans.
Speaker 1: All right, we were putting it in pencil. Five primetime games,
Speaker 1: definitely the Friday Black Friday Special against the Miami Dolphins,
Speaker 1: the Jets hosting the Miami Dolphins at Mount Leaf Stadium.
Speaker 1: How many computer iterations this year? You told me last year?
Speaker 1: Is one hundred more than one hundred thousand?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: It was similar. It's a little different this year. This
Speaker 4: is probably more than you care to know. But you know,
Speaker 4: with the added flexibility now where the AFC is the
Speaker 4: road team no longer is a by definition a CBS game,
Speaker 4: and the NFC is a road team no longer a fox.
Speaker 4: You know, for decades that's the way it worked, and
Speaker 4: so if the league wanted to take a game and
Speaker 4: move it to primetime Sunday night, Monday night, Thursday night.
Speaker 4: You were literally taking it away for CBS and FOTS.
Speaker 4: And that was actually a term a takeaway. It was
Speaker 4: in the network television contracts. It was in our ownership resolutions,
Speaker 4: like there was a limit to the number of times
Speaker 4: you could take away a game. That game belonged to CBS,
Speaker 4: and if you wanted to take it away, you couldn't
Speaker 4: then take away that one or any more than this many.
Speaker 4: That's all gone. Now every game is a jump ball,
Speaker 4: every game is a toss up. So we had a
Speaker 4: lot more options, and like we were talking about before,
Speaker 4: with some of these you know, five tool utility games,
Speaker 4: you know, to be able to consider the same game
Speaker 4: for Sunday night football, Monday night football, Thursday night football,
Speaker 4: Fox doubleheader, CBS doubleheader, that's a lot of extra grinding
Speaker 4: for the computer. That's a lot of extra nodes in
Speaker 4: the search tree. So it took a little longer for
Speaker 4: the computers to run. So the good news is the
Speaker 4: schedules that they found were better. The challenge was having
Speaker 4: to be pai and wait for them, and that's just
Speaker 4: not the way we work so it was it was
Speaker 4: a challenge for the humans to kind of like wait
Speaker 4: for the computers and you never know, Oh, is this
Speaker 4: as good as I could do?
Speaker 3: Should I turn it on? No? Let me wait ten
Speaker 3: more minutes, Let me wait, let me wait.
Speaker 4: Ten more hours. Oh jeez, I could let them run
Speaker 4: another month. And who knows, is there a better schedule
Speaker 4: out there? Probably, you know, define better. You know, take
Speaker 4: this three game road trip from this team and give
Speaker 4: it to that team, or take this short week for
Speaker 4: that team and put it on that team. You know,
Speaker 4: whatever it is that somebody likes or hates about this schedule,
Speaker 4: there's going to be something that they like or hate
Speaker 4: about the next iteration. So we could have gone another month.
Speaker 4: We could have kept grinding, We could have kept looking. Commissioner,
Speaker 4: to his credit, always challenging us. You never know when
Speaker 4: you're done. You never know if this is the best
Speaker 4: you could do. Hard for me to look them in
Speaker 4: the eye and tell them, you know, with absolute certainty,
Speaker 4: this was the optimal schedule. But I know it was closed.
Speaker 3: I know that.
Speaker 4: You know, we hung it on the wall. We know
Speaker 4: it was the leader in the clubhouse. We threw really good,
Speaker 4: high quality contender schedules at it. The difference this year
Speaker 4: is that those schedules looked really different. You know, most
Speaker 4: years you put a leader on the club, on the
Speaker 4: leader on the wall. Here's a contender. It's got all
Speaker 4: the same Sunday nights, all the same Monday nights. Just
Speaker 4: moved a couple of Sunday afternoons in this three game
Speaker 4: road trip or that. By this year, those finalists, as
Speaker 4: we got down near the end, they looked wildly different.
Speaker 4: We had different kickoff games, we had different banks giving games,
Speaker 4: we had different Christmas games. It's really hard to compare
Speaker 4: two finalists when they looked so very different. And at
Speaker 4: that point it was really hard to say better or worse.
Speaker 4: It was really more like different flavors, chocolate or vanilla.
Speaker 4: You're gonna like one, I'm gonna like one. At the
Speaker 4: end of the day, only one vote matters, and that
Speaker 4: guy picked this one. And I think we made a
Speaker 4: real good choice.
Speaker 2: I did too.
Speaker 1: Most of the ice creams that went against the wall,
Speaker 1: that were thrown against the wall, did they have the
Speaker 1: jets in week one no matter what was going on
Speaker 1: the wall?
Speaker 3: Yeah? They did.
Speaker 4: I Mean, like we said, it was going to be
Speaker 4: hard to balance the Sunday afternoons between CBS and Fox
Speaker 4: and the double doubleheader if one of them had the Jets,
Speaker 4: because then the other guy can't compete with Aaron Rodgers
Speaker 4: first game, or if one of them had Dallas, the
Speaker 4: other guy can't compete with that. And to put the
Speaker 4: Dallas game and the Jets game both in the four
Speaker 4: to twenty five window meant we as fans couldn't watch
Speaker 4: them both. You could put back and forth, which is.
Speaker 3: Fun but different.
Speaker 4: So we got real comfortable, real quick Kansas City for
Speaker 4: kickoff Jets and Dallas Sunday night and Monday night, and
Speaker 4: then kind of looked at a bunch of different options
Speaker 4: in terms of which opponents, you know, Sunday or Monday.
Speaker 4: And then as it trickled down through the rest of
Speaker 4: the schedule, if you use one of your Sunday nights here,
Speaker 4: you only get more one more Sunday night. So if
Speaker 4: you're the Jets and you want to play that casey
Speaker 4: Jets game in week four, should NBC be out of
Speaker 4: both of their Jets by the end of September. What
Speaker 4: if Rogers is a great, big story and the Jets
Speaker 4: are eaten too, NBC would love another shot at that,
Speaker 4: So trying to satisfy you know, our own personal preferences
Speaker 4: in terms of the flavor and the network partner's needs
Speaker 4: across all seventeen weeks, and again, more than anything competitive fairness.
Speaker 4: All those schedules that went up against the contender, the
Speaker 4: vast majority of them died for competitive issues. Whether it's
Speaker 4: just that three game road trip is too onerous, or
Speaker 4: that's a Monday, Sunday Thursday sequence for this team, or
Speaker 4: they've got to play a three game road trip that happens,
Speaker 4: but that three game road trip happens to include a
Speaker 4: cross country trip in it, maybe that's not the way
Speaker 4: to do it. So most of the schedules, when they
Speaker 4: have to die, they die for team issues as opposed
Speaker 4: for TV issues.
Speaker 1: You have strong relationships throughout the league.
Speaker 3: Ben, I'll let you know tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Inside this building.
Speaker 1: What was the reaction when you made the call here
Speaker 1: this week and you told.
Speaker 2: The Jet staffers of the schedule. What was the reaction?
Speaker 4: Yeah, the the Jets call was one of those good ones.
Speaker 4: I tend to try to take the ones where I
Speaker 4: know somebody might be a little disappointed. I don't want
Speaker 4: anybody else on the team to get screamed at if
Speaker 4: if you know, at the end of the day, I'm
Speaker 4: the guy pushed on the button. So I'll take most
Speaker 4: of the calls where I'm bracing for somebody's negative reaction.
Speaker 4: Every now and then I like to take one where
Speaker 4: I know somebody's going to be happy. So really excited
Speaker 4: to call Jimei and Brian Mulligan set it all up,
Speaker 4: and you know, they knew a couple of things already.
Speaker 4: We started this breadcrumb approach, so they knew the Black
Speaker 4: Friday game. The internet might have gotten a hold of
Speaker 4: maybe one or two of their other games. But to
Speaker 4: be able to give them a call and give them
Speaker 4: really what amounts to such good news, right everybody? You know,
Speaker 4: those guys they live and breathe, you know, every Sunday.
Speaker 4: They live and die every Sunday. And it's it's hard,
Speaker 4: you know, year after year, you know, to be chasing
Speaker 4: and chasing and chasing and not quite getting there, and
Speaker 4: to feel like you're that close, to feel like you
Speaker 4: made a move that was really going to be a
Speaker 4: difference maker, and then to see the League office react
Speaker 4: to it accordingly and reward you know, not just that move,
Speaker 4: but your success from last year and some of the
Speaker 4: other roster building that you've done. I think they were
Speaker 4: really excited. I think we're pretty excited and look out
Speaker 4: of our hands. We'll see what happens once the season starts.
Speaker 4: But as we sit here on May eleventh, feel really
Speaker 4: good about this schedule and feel really good about the Jets'
Speaker 4: contributions to this schedule.
Speaker 2: Well said well, Mike North.
Speaker 1: The Jets were only a matinee show last year, but
Speaker 1: they will be a prime time act five times in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three and a Black Friday special as well.
Speaker 2: We enjoyed it. We always like catching up with you.
Speaker 1: Make sure you get some sleep and some rest this weekend,
Speaker 1: you know, medicine.
Speaker 2: I know it's been a stressful time, but it's always.
Speaker 4: Thrilled to be a part of it, you know, unbelievably
Speaker 4: grateful that you know they still let me in the building. No,
Speaker 4: let's get to you know, play a role in such
Speaker 4: an important project that you know everybody's so excited about.
Speaker 4: I mean, you and I have been doing this long
Speaker 4: enough to know. Schedule used to come out kind of
Speaker 4: middle of April with no pomp and circumstances. You can
Speaker 4: call on Wednesday, like hey, it's coming out tomorrow, and like, okay,
Speaker 4: you take the schedule and away you go. Now you
Speaker 4: see kind of the social media arms race where everybody's
Speaker 4: doing something and everybody's got their you know, team parties,
Speaker 4: and you could really make an event out of it,
Speaker 4: which is awesome.
Speaker 3: And I love that people care.
Speaker 4: I love that they're so interested and unbelievably grateful for
Speaker 4: the team that we have here. Annie Bo's, Blake Jones,
Speaker 4: Charlotte Carey, Lucy Popko, working with Howard Katz, Hans Schroeder,
Speaker 4: Brian Rollapp. I mean, these people have been living and
Speaker 4: breathing this process for fourteen weeks and really really challenging
Speaker 4: each other to find that magical, mythical perfect schedule. I'm
Speaker 4: not sure we did, but I hope we're close. And
Speaker 4: now it's kind of up to the guys on the field,
Speaker 4: and I hope everybody stays healthy, and I hope everybody's
Speaker 4: eight and eight going into week eighteen and still in
Speaker 4: a playoff.
Speaker 1: Chase Well, we hope to see a Week one at
Speaker 1: Matt Weist.
Speaker 2: I mean there Jets, Bill's Monday Night Football.
Speaker 1: Mike North, vice president of broadcast Planning for the National
Speaker 1: Football League have a good one.
Speaker 3: Thank you, appreciate it.