The people charged with putting together the 272-game NFL schedule you’re leafing through right now digested the Tom Brady news March 13 the same way you did on that fateful night—with a mixture of shock and excitement, and anticipation for what might come next in the wildest offseason of them all.
The difference is, from there, it really was time for Onnie Bose, Howard Katz, Mike North, Charlotte Carey, Blake Jones and Nick Cooney to get back to work. So hours later, after a night’s sleep, the six schedule-makers reconvened in New York, with a mountain to climb.
“When you’re thinking the greatest player of all time has retired and with the opponents Tampa just has?” said Bose, the NFL’s VP of broadcasting, on Thursday, just before the schedule release. “We were gonna use those games in good places, anyway, because they were still Dallas and Kansas City and Green Bay and the Rams. But him returning just elevated six to eight games—you can play those in any window. That was a game-changer for us.
