{"id":684988,"date":"2026-05-21T10:43:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T10:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/684988\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T10:43:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T10:43:13","slug":"joe-burrow-hailed-as-game-changer-for-nfl-and-schedule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/684988\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Burrow hailed as \u2018game-changer\u2019 for NFL and schedule"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NFL said all it needed to say about the Cincinnati Bengals<\/a> with next year\u2019s schedule.<\/p>\n

Joe Burrow<\/a> is an international star and he\u2019s taking the Bengals<\/a> brand with him.<\/p>\n

The NFL could have chosen any number of teams for the international game in Madrid, Spain. But it chose the Bengals for the game in what it considered to be a key market for growth as the expansion continues.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Mike North, the NFL’s vice president of broadcast planning, recently said that this same logic applied to saving big Bengals for key spots late in the season.<\/p>\n

“(Burrow) is a game-changer in this league. There’s no real hesitation that we talked about to save some of the big ones for late in the season,” North said, according to Geoff Hobson<\/a> of Bengals.com. “Wave a magic wand, maybe move the Kansas City game up a little earlier \u2026 I’m sure FOX maybe would prefer that KC-Cincy game a little bit earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n

It shows. After the trip to Madrid in Week 9, the Bengals play in back-to-back primetime games on Sunday and Monday nights, in that order.<\/p>\n

In Week 14, the mentioned game against Kansas City<\/a> is a 4:25 p.m. ET kickoff, which the NFL considers a premium spot in front of a national audience these days.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Week 17? A Thursday night game against the Ravens<\/a>. Then, in Week 18 against Cleveland<\/a>, there\u2019s a \u201cTBD\u201d because the NFL wants the freedom to put it wherever it wants.<\/p>\n

There are nitpicks about the Bengals\u2019 schedule. But reading between the lines, it\u2019s clear the NFL has circled Burrow and the Bengals as an important team to prioritize, not just for entertainment value, but ratings and even league growth.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Bengals Wire: Joe Burrow hailed as \u2018game-changer\u2019 for NFL and schedule<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NFL said all it needed to say about the Cincinnati Bengals with next year\u2019s schedule. Joe Burrow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,1252,6115,330174,629,13521,330173,314167,593,614,85,61796,41710],"class_list":["post-684988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cincinnati-bengals","tag-cleveland","tag-international-star","tag-joe-burrow","tag-kansas-city","tag-kansas-city-game","tag-mike-north","tag-nfl","tag-ravens","tag-sports","tag-the-bengals","tag-the-nfl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}