The NFL put a menu of nine national TV games on Christmas weekend from Wednesday through Monday
night but didn’t make it easy for a lot of fans to watch most of them.
–The weekend started with the two Christmas games Wednesday games — Kansas City’s 29-10 victory over the Steelers and the Ravens 31-2 rout of the Texans — that were shown on Netflix. After the usual Amazon Thursday night game (Seattle beat Chicago, 6-3), they scheduled three more on Saturday that were on the NFL NFL network — the Chargers at New England, Denver at Cincinnati and the Cardinals at the Rams.
–The Green Bay at Minnesota late Sunday afternoon telecast on Fox will also be a national telecast along with the usual Sunday night game on NBC featuring Atlanta at Washington and the usual Monday night game pitting Detroit at San Francisco on ESPN/ABC. Putting games on Netflix and Amazon are good for the NFL’s bottom line and the NFL Network games are good for promoting the network, but not good for fans who don’t have access to those pay channels.
–There is not much drama left in the AFC after Kansas City nailed down the top seed with the victory over Pittsburgh. The Chiefs are now two home games away from the Super Bowl and their bid for a three peat. Their regular season finale against Denver is now meaningless and they will likely face either a wild card team or the Texans in the divisional game and will likely face the winner of the Bills-Ravens game in the AFC title game unless one of those teams is upset in either the first two rounds.
The Chiefs spent much of the season winning games by one score but now seem to be hitting their stride late in the season.
–In the NFC if Minnesota beats Green Bay Sunday and Detroit beats San Francisco Monday night, the Vikings and Lions will play for the top seed in the NFC in the final weekend of the season. The loser will be in the playoffs as a wild card team and they could meet again in the playoffs.
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