NFL Vice President of Broadcasting Onnie Bose recently appeared on “The Dan Patrick Show” to discuss some of the games on the 2023 NFL schedule.
When the Detroit Lions were announced as the Kansas City Chiefs’ Week 1 opponent for their Super Bowl LVII banner night, it was met with some head-scratching from fans around the league.
Why the Lions?
That seems to be the question on everyone’s mind, and Patrick agreed. He asked Bose about the decision, specifically mentioning the fact that the Lions didn’t make the playoffs last season, and Bose revealed what made Detroit an appealing opponent for the occasion. First, however, Bose set the stage with some of the league brass’s thoughts on the Chiefs.
#NFL VP of Broadcast Onnie Bose discusses why the league decided to have the #Chiefs open the season against the #Lions.
For Onnie's full appearance: https://t.co/rT3mo6IUwZ pic.twitter.com/yU0UgsAkQY
— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) May 11, 2023
“That’s one of the ones that we probably had our more passionate discussion about,” Bose said. “A couple of things to factor in there. One, when you start with the Kansas City Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes — any Super Bowl champion is going to be attractive — but when you’ve got them in there, you’re going to have a high amount of attention and it’s going to get a lot of viewership. (Mahomes) is kind of our gold standard at this point of the individual player that people are going to tune in to watch.”
As far as the decision to have the Lions as the Chiefs’ opponent is concerned, the league explored a lot of different possibilities before landing on this matchup.
“(The Chiefs) have great home opponents this year,” Bose continued. “We could have gone out with a Super Bowl rematch. We could have played Cincinnati, the (AFC) championship rematch. We could have played Buffalo. Any one of those games would have gotten blockbuster numbers. We considered all of them. They’ve got great divisional matchups. The AFC West always matters. The Chargers play great prime-time games against the Chiefs. So we left ourselves open-minded.
“There are years where we say, ‘This is the one game we’re going to play on kickoff (to open the season).’ This year, we kind of said, ‘There are a lot of games that we’ve got to consider.’ And as we went through the process, the Lions were one of those teams that we left in there. And we really like the narrative around that time, the culture that they’re building there. The way they finished their season, eight wins out of their last nine or 10 games. The last time we saw them on national television was the last game, game 272 of the regular season, and they were beating the Packers in Lambeau to keep Aaron Rodgers out of the playoffs. We really like that. There is a lot of energy there, and we feel really good about starting the season with that energy against the Super Bowl champs.”
Detroit ended its 2022 NFL season on a high note despite falling short of a playoff appearance. Now they’re being rewarded with a chance to open up the season against the Super Bowl champions. It should be a good measuring stick for the Lions, who are clearly viewed by the NFL brass as one of the up-and-coming teams in the league.
