Even before the NFL concludes its wild-card postseason round, there’s growing angst over the scheduling for this weekend’s divisional playoff games.

As the league and ESPN prepare for Monday night’s Texans-Steelers game to conclude the wild-card round, the NFL released the schedule for the upcoming divisional games. The four contests will include:

Sat., Jan. 17 

• Bills (No. 6 in the AFC) at Broncos (No. 1 in the AFC)

• 49ers (No. 6 in the NFC) at Seahawks (No. 1 in the NFC)

Sun., Jan. 18

• Rams (No. 5 in the NFC) at Bears (No. 2 in the NFC)

• Texans or Steelers (No. 5 or 4 in the AFC) at Patriots (No. 2 in the AFC)

Specific broadcast networks and slots for the games have not yet been finalized, but the Saturday games will start at 4:30 p.m. ET and 8 p.m. ET. The Sunday games will be at 3 p.m. ET and 6:30 p.m. ET. The NFL’s four linear rights holders—CBS, ESPN/ABC, Fox, and NBC—will each carry one divisional game. 

The divisional playoff game schedule, however, will contain varying levels of rest for the participating teams—an inevitable outgrowth of the league’s current scheduling format. 

The 49ers, for example, will travel to Seattle and face the Seahawks on five days of rest after playing in the late-afternoon window Sunday at Philadelphia. The Rams, conversely, will have seven days of rest before their game against the Bears after defeating the Panthers last Saturday. 

That choice went against the wishes of 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan, who said after beating the Eagles, “If the NFL is cool and understanding they’ll make [the Seahawks game] Sunday.”

Monday Night Math

Further complicating the situation is the presence of Monday-night wild-card games, something the NFL started in the 2021 season as part of a new rights deal with the Disney-controlled ABC. When the Chargers, the No. 7 seed in the AFC, lost to the Patriots on Sunday night, that confirmed that tonight’s winner will head to Foxborough—in turn necessitating that divisional game not be played this Saturday. 

Similar variances in team rest have cropped up in the five years that the NFL has staged the wild-card round over a three-day weekend. 

“NFL playoff scheduling is not fair,” tweeted Tony Dungy, former NFL head coach and now an analyst on NBC’s Football Night in America. “It might produce good ratings, but it’s not fair. … The wild-card round should be 3 games on Saturday and 3 games on Sunday.”

That almost certainly will not happen, either in the current rights deal or a future one, as the league prepares to reopen its agreements. The initial five-year term between ESPN and the NFL for those Monday-night wild-card games expires after tonight, and Disney is interested in extending it. There will be competition, though, for those rights. 

More broadly, the NFL’s inclusion of the Monday-night wild-card games has generally been a solid success, with those games drawing as much as 31 million on average for television viewership. Last year’s Monday-night wild-card game between the Vikings and Rams, however, saw a 13% drop in viewership to an average of 25.4 million as the matchup was relocated due to California wildfires, and then saw Los Angeles put up a sizable lead.

League scheduling decisions include a wide variety of factors, including market sizes of the competing teams, fairness to broadcasters both within a single year and across multiple seasons, on-field histories, weather, and ticket sales, among others. The choice to place the upcoming Rams-Bears game on Sunday was driven materially by a desire to have the Nos. 2 and 3 U.S. media markets involved on that day, as viewership typically builds within each postseason weekend. 

Slotting is already set for the conference championship games on Jan. 25. CBS will carry the AFC championship game at 3 p.m. ET, while Fox will follow with the NFC championship game at 6:30 p.m. ET. That weekend has operated on an annual rotation basis where CBS and Fox take turns having the coveted late game on the day. That late game is typically the most-watched event on U.S. television each year with the exception of the Super Bowl.

The Bears are still looking all over Chicagoland for a new stadium site—including across the state border—but team-owned land in Arlington Heights, Ill., is getting another high-profile look.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell visited the 326-acre parcel (the former Arlington International Racecourse) on Saturday before attending the Bears’ wild-card playoff victory at Soldier Field. 

Chicago’s furious fourth-quarter comeback gave the team its first playoff win since the 2010 season. Goodell was at the prospective stadium site with Bears chairman George McCaskey and team president and CEO Kevin Warren, who is spearheading the long-running push for a new venue. 

Team officials declined to comment regarding Goodell’s visit. Industry sources, however, told Front Office Sports that the trip was part of ongoing due diligence the Bears are conducting in an attempt to strike a stadium agreement.

Recent months have seen significant movement by the Bears in their stadium push, but it’s still not nearly as much as they’d like. Before the first game of what has been a breakthrough season, the team abandoned prior plans for a downtown venue and reverted its focus to the suburban parcel in Arlington Heights. 

Hoping to win over skeptical legislators, the Bears also substantially reduced their ask for public money, lowering a push for about $2 billion to $855 million in infrastructure support. Despite that, state-level support for the Bears’ stadium push has been weak; Gov. J.B. Pritzker remains a skeptic of funding the project.

Because of that, the Bears recently expanded their search for viable sites to northwest Indiana. The team said in a letter that Illinois leaders told them the new stadium “will not be a priority in 2026, despite the benefits it will bring to Illinois.”

Goodell, Warren, and McCaskey also toured several potential sites in Indiana, sources said. 

The team is aiming to build a $5 billion domed venue and mixed-use development that would not only serve as its future home but also bring major events such as the Super Bowl, College Football Playoff, and Final Four to the No. 3 U.S. media market. 

The team says construction costs continue to escalate by more than $10 million per month—not surprising given broader inflationary and tariff fears across the economy.

Two stalwart MLB franchises are in a state of heightened transition after veteran third baseman Alex Bregman reached a five-year, $175 million free-agent deal with the Cubs. 

The pact with Chicago, including $70 million in deferrals, followed a single season in Boston, after which Bregman opted out of the final two seasons of a three-year contract to reenter free agency. Despite an injury-afflicted campaign with the Red Sox that included just 114 games played, Bregman elevated his market considerably. 

Bregman’s contract includes no opt-outs and a full no-trade clause. With those elements, as well as additional money, the new deal with the Cubs is a marked upgrade over a four-year, $115 million deal the team offered the 31-year-old last offseason.

Boston is the lone MLB franchise to not have signed a free agent this offseason, and retaining Bregman had been a key priority for the Red Sox entering the offseason. The news of his departure arrived just after the conclusion of the club’s offseason Fenway Fest fan event on Saturday, which amplified an already nervous vibe among many Red Sox faithful.

Appearing at Fenway Fest, Red Sox president and CEO Sam Kennedy pointed to a series of contractual extensions the team has made in the last year including to star pitcher Garrett Crochet and second baseman Kristian Campbell.

“I think it’s just important to look at the facts,” Kennedy said. “If you go back a year ago, this date last year, I believe our organization has taken on close to $500 million in contractual commitments. … That’s just a fact. We cannot and do not try to control social media narrative. We understand that talk radio is ablaze with opinions and ideas. That’s what makes this the best place in the world to be, to live, and to operate in baseball.”

Kennedy, however, did not mention a prior trade of third baseman Rafael Devers that shed more than $250 million in future payroll, and was made in part with an eye toward gaining greater financial latitude for free-agent markets such as this one.

North Side Elevation

Bregman’s contract is the richest in Cubs history on an annual basis, and continues an active offseason for the club as it looks to catch up to the archrival Brewers—who claimed the NL Central division title last season and eliminated the Cubs in the playoffs. 

The Cubs also recently brokered a trade with the Marlins to bring in hard-throwing pitcher Edward Cabrera for three prospects. With the club’s chances of retaining outfielder Kyle Tucker, by many accounts the top available free agent, signing Bregman brings another impact bat to the lineup, along with widely lauded leadership skills and plenty of postseason experience, burnished through a prior run with the Astros that included two World Series titles. 

The signing of Bregman also added to a particularly epic sports Saturday for Chicago that included the Bears’ playoff win over the hated Packers, and victories by the Bulls and Blackhawks.