Like a good neighbor, NFL sets up Patrick Mahomes-Aaron Rodgers matchup with addition of 17th game in 2021 |

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, due to 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 Recreation losses to the San Francisco 49ers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers the previous two postseasons prevented Rodgers and Mahomes from going mano-a-mano 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 may 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 an especially proficient participant. I really like placing on the movie and watching him and his arm angles and throwing skill 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 instructed his coach, Matt LaFleur, had stated that he was the quarterback Mahomes “is most just like” due to their off-platform throws, altering arm angles, arm energy and accuracy, Rodgers replied, “I imply, it’s onerous as an energetic participant to make a comparability like that, and I don’t wish to do him any disservice. I feel he’s an exceptional participant. He does some unbelievable issues on the sector.

“I take pleasure in 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 received the arm to place it everywhere in the area. He clearly had a incredible 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.

The extra regular-season recreation shall be interspersed with the opposite 16 video games, versus all 32 groups taking part in their further recreation on the identical weekend.

“The seventeenth recreation, they will put it anyplace,” Packers crew president/CEO Mark Murphy stated throughout a Zoom name with reporters Tuesday night. “They will schedule that to attract one of the best (TV) rankings.”

With a highway recreation in opposition to the Chiefs formally added to their slate, the Packers’ already difficult 2021 schedule received that a lot harder. Of their 16 video games, 10 shall be in opposition to groups that made the playoffs this previous season, together with two matchups with their NFC North rivals, the Chicago Bears.

Along with their home-and-home collection with the Bears, Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions, the Packers are additionally set to host the Seattle Seahawks, Los Angeles Rams, Pittsburgh Steelers and the Washington Soccer Workforce at house. Seattle, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Washington, Chicago and L.A. all made the playoffs final yr, with the Packers beating the Rams at Lambeau Discipline within the divisional spherical to advance to the NFC title recreation.

On the highway, the Packers 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 shedding to Mahomes and the Chiefs in Tremendous Bowl LIV a yr earlier.

Chatting with reporters Tuesday through the league’s a two-day digital assembly of homeowners, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell known as the enlargement of the regular-season schedule a “monumental second in NFL historical past,” as this 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 isn’t 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 wish to see each certainly 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 a minimum of 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 collection, because the membership has been unwilling to surrender a house recreation within the league’s smallest market. Murphy stated the seventeenth recreation units the stage for each crew to surrender a house recreation to play internationally whereas nonetheless having eight house video games.

“I feel whenever you step again and take a look at it, for the nice of the league, with the ability to develop the sport internationally actually goes to learn the league long run,” Murphy stated, including that the international nations mentioned Tuesday had been England, Mexico and Germany, with longer-range potentialities in Canada, Brazil, China and Australia.

“The very fact you continue to have eight house video games is a constructive. The opposite factor I thought of, significantly if we play in London, I feel a number of our followers are actually going to be excited in regards to the alternative to journey internationally and go to London and have the ability to watch the Packers play a global recreation.”

Photographs: Packers’ 2020 season in footage