2014 NFL schedule: NFL’s upcoming slate announced

To see which game is on in your area, check out 506 Sports.

Here’s an overview of where to watch each game (all times ET):

Green Bay Packers vs. Seattle Seahawks (-5)

New Orleans Saints vs. Atlanta Falcons (-2)

Photo credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

In other words, the Week 17 game involving the Cowboys has been a de-facto NFC East Championship game, and we know that things never change in the NFL, right? Right!

The drastic, and often unforeseen, changes from one season to the next makes offseason strength of schedule much ado about nothing. Sure, some teams who we think will be good will actually be good and some we think will be bad will in fact be bad. But, how many fans looked at the 2013 NFL schedule on release day and thought “oh my team plays the Texans, that will be a tough game.” At the same time, many probably put a big W next to the Chiefs, when forecasting their teams’ projected win/loss record.

The NFL schedule release is a thing now, and forecasting the season is a natural result, but when doing it, remember, offseason strength of schedule isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

The NFL officially released its 2014 schedule on Wednesday night, giving fans their first look at next season’s slate.

Here’s the complete schedule for the 2014 season (all times ET).

When the NFL schedule is released, the first reaction of many is to immediately look for the most high-profile games. The games on national television, the games against division opponents or other rivals, the games against the best teams. Seemingly, the list of opponents, and not the week they are slotted to, is the most important. While that is probably right, winning certain weeks has led to season success.

Take Week 1 for example. There is a saying around the NFL that the season is a marathon, not a sprint, and that winning the season opener doesn’t guarantee success and losing doesn’t spell doom. Although that is true, teams that open the season 1-0 go on to have success far more often than teams that begin the year with a loss. In the last decade, only 43 of the 160 teams who lost in Week 1 went on to finish the regular season with a winning record. Of the 160 teams who started 1-0, 96 finished with a winning record. It carries over to the playoffs too. Of the 120 teams to make the playoffs since 2003, 72 percent of them opened the season with a win. Eight of the last 10 Super Bowl winners opened 1-0 while just eight teams in history went on to win the Super Bowl after dropping to 0-1.

The NFL has released its official Thursday Night Football schedule for the 2014 season. The schedule features 16 games, including a pair of special Saturday editions of Thursday Night Football in Week 16.

The NFL regular season will begin on Thursday, Sept. 4, in Seattle, but technically that game is a special edition of Sunday Night Football, so the Thursday Night Football schedule won’t begin until Week 2 when the Steelers travel to face the Ravens in a classic AFC North matchup. The vast majority of Thursday Night Football games will feature division rivals, with only two of the 16 games not being division matchups.

The Sunday Night Football schedule has been officially released for the 2014 NFL season and once again the schedule features some of the best matchups the NFL has to offer.

The schedule consists of 18 games, including special broadcast of Sunday Night Football on Thursday Sept. 4 for the season opener between Seattle and Green Bay. That could be a tough game to top, but it is only one of several games that on paper, will have major playoff implications. Andrew Luck and the Colts will travel to Denver in Week 1. The Saints and Cowboys will square off in Week 4. The Broncos will host San Francisco in Week 7 while the 49ers will host Seattle in the Thanksgiving edition of Sunday Night Football. Nine of the 18 matchups are battles of two 2013 playoff teams.

The drastic year-to-year change in the NFL makes it nearly impossible to determine the difficulty of a schedule until a few weeks into the season. Last year at this time, the Chiefs were coming off a 2-14 season and looked like a cupcake game for opponents in 2013. Kansas City was just the opposite, finishing 11-5 and making the playoffs.

What may look like an easy game now could be anything but when it actually arrives. The opposite is true, too. Playing the Falcons in 2013 appeared to be a tough challenge. They’d won at least 9 games in five straight seasons and were coming off a 13-3 season. Atlanta dropped to 4-12 last season and wasn’t nearly as big of a challenge for opponents as many thought they’d be.

Even when there’s no football being played, the NFL still dominates the headlines throughout the offseason. Things were no different on Wednesday, when the league released its 2014 season schedule to much fanfare.

The Seattle Seahawks kick off the season on Sept. 4, when the Green Bay Packers come to town to face the defending champions. Unlike last season, there are no scheduling conflicts with other sports teams, so Seahawks fans get to see the championship banner raised and rings handed out in person at CenturyLink Field.

The NFL has released the official Monday Night Football schedule for the 2014 season. ESPN will be televising these games for the ninth year in a row.

The Monday Night Football matchup used to be the most anticipated game of the week. Flex scheduling has led to Sunday Night Football overtaking it as the game of the week in some regards, but the 2014 Monday night schedule will surely garner attention. The defending Super Bowl champions will make only one appearance on Monday Night Football. Seattle will travel to face the Washington Redskins in Week 5. The game of the year on Monday Night Football may come in Week 10 when the Panthers travel to face the Eagles. Carolina and Philadelphia are rising teams in the NFL and watching the Panthers defense take on the Eagles offense should be a treat.

It all begins Sept. 4 in Seattle with the Seahawks vs. the Packers.

As we await Wednesday night’s reveal of the 2014 NFL schedule, NFL.com reports that tweaks are coming to the league’s flex procedure for Sunday night games. Kickoffs scheduled for Sunday afternoon can now be bumped up to the coveted prime time slot beginning Week 5. In previous seasons, the league did not have have the flex option until Week 11.

The new flexibility comes with a minor caveat: Games can’t be flexed every week from Weeks 5 to 10. The NFL can only flex two games total over that six-week span, so it will have to choose wisely if it hopes to maximize ratings. Beginning Week 11, every Sunday afternoon game of every week can potentially be bumped into prime time.

Week 5: Phillip Rivers’ wife gives birth to twins Josidiah and Jobibedah.

Week 9: Phillip Rivers’ wife is pregnant again.

It’s a special day for NFL fans everywhere. The 2014 regular season schedule will be released tonight on primetime television. Schedule shows start at 8:00 p.m. ET on the NFL Network and ESPN2 will run counter to Game 2 of the Mavericks and Spurs series, which was probably the league’s plan to tweak Mark Cuban (spoiler alert: the Spurs will win anyway). At any rate, such an important event is going to require some preparation on your part to maximize enjoyment of the schedule release.

You’re going to want to tailgate to this. Most NFL fans and everyone in the greater Kansas City metropolitan area find any event is enhanced by drinking canned domestic beer near an internal combustion engine. We’ve made you a handy checklist.

The NFL has announced that they will make an announcement Wednesday. Fortunately, that announcement is the one we’ve been waiting for: the official schedule release of the 2014-15 regular season. The NFL Network announced Tuesday that the schedule will be revealed at 8 p.m. ET on the network and NFL.com.

Whatever the league has been doing, it has worked. Even with playoffs ongoing in two different sports, seemingly nothing gets Twitter going crazier than rumors of an upcoming schedule release. To this point, we already know which teams will play and where, but we don’t know how the schedule will look on a week-to-week basis. All will be revealed Wednesday.