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GREEN BAY — Aaron Rodgers was a fan of Patrick Mahomes lengthy earlier than the 2 NFL MVPs and Tremendous Bowl-winning quarterbacks started pitching State Farm insurance coverage collectively.
Now, because of the NFL formally including a seventeenth recreation to the 2021 NFL schedule, maybe the Inexperienced Bay Packers’ 37-year-old star and the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs’ 25-year-old star will get to do one thing they’ve but to do: face off in a recreation.
Mahomes missed the Packers’ 31-24 victory over the Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas Metropolis in October 2019 with a dislocated kneecap, and the Packers’ NFC Championship Sport losses to the San Francisco 49ers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers the previous two postseasons prevented Rodgers and Mahomes from going head-to-head in Tremendous Bowl LIV or LV.
However with the NFL increasing its regular-season schedule to 17 video games (and lowering the preseason schedule to 3 video games per crew) for this coming season, they’ll get their likelihood to duel at Arrowhead if each are wholesome for the matchup. (The Packers and Chiefs did face off within the 2018 and 2019 preseasons, however Mahomes and Rodgers sat out these video games.)
“Clearly, he’s a particularly proficient participant. I really like placing on the movie and watching him and his arm angles and throwing capability and his eye manipulation. He’s an excessive expertise within the league,” Rodgers stated the week of that 2019 recreation earlier than Mahomes was dominated out.
When advised his coach, Matt LaFleur, had stated he was the quarterback Mahomes “is most much like” due to their off-platform throws, altering arm angles, arm energy and accuracy, Rodgers replied, “I imply, it’s arduous as an lively participant to make a comparability like that, and I don’t need to do him any disservice. I feel he’s an outstanding participant. He does some unbelievable issues on the sphere.
“I get pleasure from watching guys who’ve related types. He’s in a position to lengthen performs. He’s clearly very proficient throwing the ball on the run to both facet. He’s bought the arm to place it everywhere in the discipline. He clearly had a implausible yr (in 2018) profitable MVP and I feel he’s going to be round for some time doing that.”
So as to add the seventeenth recreation, the NFL paired up NFC and AFC divisions, with the NFC North drawing the AFC West. The groups from opposing conferences that completed in the identical place inside their division the earlier season will match up, and the Packers (13-3) and Chiefs (14-2) gained their respective divisions. The AFC will get the extra house recreation this yr; the NFC will get it in 2022.
In the meantime, the NFC groups will host two preseason video games whereas taking part in one exhibition on the highway in 2021, with the AFC then getting the extra house preseason video games in 2022. Meaning every crew will host 10 complete video games annually, preseason included.
With a highway recreation towards the Chiefs formally added to their slate, the Packers’ already difficult 2021 schedule bought that a lot harder. Of their 16 video games, 10 shall be towards groups that made the playoffs this previous season, together with two matchups with NFC North rivals the Chicago Bears.
Along with their home-and-home sequence with the Bears, Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions, the Packers are additionally set to play host to the Seattle Seahawks, Los Angeles Rams, Pittsburgh Steelers and the Washington Soccer crew at house. Seattle, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Washington, Chicago and L.A. all made the playoffs final yr, with the Packers beating the Rams at Lambeau Area within the NFC Divisional spherical to advance to the NFC title recreation.
On the highway, the Packers will journey to face the 49ers, Arizona Cardinals, New Orleans Saints, Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals and the Chiefs. Kansas Metropolis, New Orleans and Baltimore made the playoffs final yr, whereas the injury-riddled 49ers fell to 6-10 after dropping to Mahomes and the Chiefs in Tremendous Bowl LIV a yr earlier.
Talking to reporters Tuesday throughout the league’s a two-day digital assembly of householders, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell referred to as the enlargement of the regular-season schedule a “monumental second in NFL historical past,” because it marks the primary time the schedule has been expanded because the league went from a 14-game schedule to 16 video games in 1978. The league will not be including a second bye week as a part of the enlargement.
Goodell additionally stated the league is aiming to have full stadiums for the 2021 season after the COVID-19 pandemic pressured video games to be performed in empty or near-empty stadiums all yr.
“All of us within the NFL need to see each considered one of our followers again,” Goodell stated. “Soccer is solely not the identical with out followers, and we count on to have full stadiums within the upcoming season.”
Along with the expanded schedule, the NFL additionally introduced that every of its 32 groups will play no less than one worldwide recreation over an eight-year span starting with the 2022 season.
The Packers are the one crew within the NFL to haven’t performed within the worldwide sequence, because the membership has been unwilling to surrender a house recreation within the league’s smallest market, and crew president/CEO Mark Murphy has been hopeful {that a} seventeenth recreation would possibly clear the way in which for the Packers to play outdoors of the USA.
“I feel it’d be nice for the group, I feel our gamers would adore it, and we’ve bought a fairly large fan base in Nice Britain,” Murphy stated in 2019 of a attainable London recreation. “It’s the identical points (yearly). I feel it’s going to take the league getting concerned and saying, ‘For the great of the league, we’d like the Packers to play a global recreation.’
“One of many issues that we’ve got talked about could be in case you ever go to 17 video games — perhaps two preseason and 17 common season — then all people would play a global recreation. So nobody must surrender a house recreation. However that’s only a preliminary dialogue. It’s an attention-grabbing idea. Should you actually need to develop the sport internationally, that may offer you a variety of alternatives.”
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