The Kansas City Chiefs Will Play Rivalry Games On Christmas And New Year’s Eve

The Kansas City Chiefs will have a very busy holiday season.

Though the full schedule won’t be released until Thursday night, the NFL has confirmed the Chiefs will play the Las Vegas Raiders on Christmas Day and then then host the Cincinnati Bengals on New Year’s Eve.

The Raiders are the Chiefs’ traditional rival, dating back to the late 1960s.

But as the Chiefs have dominated the AFC West of late, winning seven straight titles, they have won five straight against the Raiders.

Meanwhile, the Bengals have become their new rival.

Despite not being in the same division like the Raiders and the Chiefs, the Bengals and Chiefs have played each other four times, including two AFC Championship Games decided by three points, the last two years.

“It’s really intense,” Bengals Left Tackle Orlando Brown Jr. said, “on both sides.”

After the Bengals signed Brown, the Chiefs’ starting left tackle the last two seasons, to a four-year, $64 million deal — which includes 67.87% of it fully guaranteed and $42.3 million of it through year two — the Bengals-Chiefs rivalry ratcheted up.

In fact, as part of the schedule release, Brown actually participated in a funny video spoofing the ill-conceived video prior to the AFC Championship Game when the Cincinnati mayor said that Patrick Mahomes needed to take a paternity test to determine if Joe Burrow was his father.

This time Mayor Aftab Pureval simply states the Bengals play the Chiefs in Week 17 and that “he has nothing else to add.”

Often, the very first game of the season is a marquee matchup involving the defending Super Bowl champion.

Although the Super Bowl LVII champion Chiefs will kick off the season on Thursday night of Sept. 7, it’s against the Detroit Lions, who had the NFL’s second worst record just two years ago.

Perhaps it’s a sign the NFL sees the Lions, who improved to 9-8 last season, as a team on the rise.

A more juicy matchup will take place in Frankfurt, Germany on Nov. 5. That will match Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill against the Chiefs, the team that traded him away prior to last year’s Super Bowl championship run.

And that game should generate a lot of money for the German economy, considering the inaugural German game resulted in 70.2 million euros for the city of Munich.

Playing on holidays may be just the wave of the future for the Chiefs, considering they are the NFL’s signature team and the NFL continues to expand its schedule. (This year features not only multiple Christmas games, but also a Black Friday contest.)

The Raiders-Chiefs game will be televised on CBS and Nickelodeon at 1 p.m. EST on Monday, Dec. 25.

Last year the Chiefs played on both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day.

The Chiefs beat the Seattle Seahawks 24-10 on a frigid, 12-degree day on Christmas Eve. They were a bit more listless on New Year’s Day, defeating the Denver Broncos 27-24.

Look for this year’s New Year’s Eve game against the Bengals to have much greater intensity.

“Those games have just become so important,” Brown Jr. said. “It’s naturally created this competitive rivalry.”