One Change to Schedule | 2024 Point Counterpoint

The Kansas City Chiefs will play on six different nights of the week in 2024, something that would have been impossible only a handful of seasons ago, which is probably why it hasn’t happened to any team in 97 years. The Chiefs will play on a Wednesday as part of the NFL’s Christmas Day double-header, and they’ll play on Black Friday as well. That’s bizarre.

There are some other unusual quirks to the NFL schedule in 2024. For instance, neither the Chicago Bears nor the Pittsburgh Steelers will play an opponent within their own division during the first 10 weeks of the season. Then there are the usual nuisances that fall on one team or another each year, from starting out with two road games (Jets, Raiders, Rams, Steelers), or ending the season with two road games (Chargers, Chiefs, Dolphins, Panthers, Seahawks), or playing three road games in a row (Bears, Bills, Browns, Vikings).

None of those things befell the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this year. They do have an eight-week stretch in their schedule in which they play only two home games, the second straight season that has happened, but overall it’s hard to protest too much about how the Bucs’ 18 games fell out.

Therefore, please don’t consider today’s discussion a complaint. It’s more like nit-picking. Staff Writer/Reporter Brianna Dix and I are spending the week discussing various topics related to the Bucs’ 2024 schedule in our Point-Counterpoint series, and today our task is to make one change to that schedule. Maybe we’d rather play a certain opponent at a different time of the season, or break up a particularly tough run of games. It could be anything, big or small, that we would like to have the power to change.

This is the third in our series of five schedule-related debates. Here’s the run-down for the whole week:

Monday, May 20: What one thing would you most like to thank the NFL schedule makers for this year?

Tuesday, May 21 What is the toughest stretch of games on this year’s schedule?

Wednesday, May 22: What is one thing you would change about the Bucs’ schedule if you had the power?

Thursday, May 23 What is your most anticipated game on the Bucs’ 2024 schedule?

Friday, May 17: Who is the most interesting rookie the Buccaneers will face on their 2024 schedule?

Brianna and I are not going to duplicate answers, so the order of our debate is important. We’ve rotated back to Brianna in the pole position for this one.