The annual NFL schedule release has become one of the more underrated dates on the sports calendar. If your NFL team is a contender (something we don’t have to worry about this season, but hopefully in future seasons we do) then you’re learning what the path to glory looks like. even if you’re team is an also ran (that’s us!), you get to plan out your autumn and winter months, and maybe squeeze in a road trip or two!
For me, personally, I get to find out exactly how much sleep I can expect on various game weekends (NOTE: Primetime games mean ZERO sleep.), and my wife and I get to map out our annual tradition, a trip to an NFL stadium outside of Houston on the Texans’ bye week. It’s really like Christmas morning for NFL schedule nerds, like me.
So without further ado, let’s all nerd out together! Here is the Houston Texans’ 2023 schedule:
DeMeco Ryans gets about as tough a career opener as he could ask for
Going into Thursday morning, on my radio show, I said that my only wish was for the Texans to open their season at home, so that there would be no chance of coming into the home opener, in this new era of DeMeco-fueled hope, on a downer with an 0-1 record. Well, this would be the polar opposite of that wish. Not only are the Texans opening on the road, but they are opening against a team that (a) has one of the best home field advantages in football, and (b) is just a terrible matchup for a defense that struggled greatly defending the run last season. Lamar Jackson will be playing his first game under his new mega deal contract, and unfortunately, the Texans will be catching him on the schedule presumably at his healthiest, in Week 1.
One byproduct of pursuing relevance — you’ll get lots of sleep!
Hey, don’t get me wrong, I look forward to getting back to the days when the Texans were routinely in prime time games at least two or three times a year. Those are fun days (and nights)! However, if you’re looking for a consistency to your weekly schedules in general, and your Sunday afternoons more specifically, this is the schedule for you! 16 of the 17 regular season games start at noon local time on Sunday, and the one outlier is a 3:05 p.m. start against Denver at NRG Stadium. No prime time games also, selfishly, means that the host fo the Texans’ radio postgame show won’t have any late nights where he has to get up four hours later for his morning radio show. That host is me.
Get used to some unfamiliar announce teams, if you’re watching on TV
For the last several years, the Sunday afternoon slate of games, in the early window and late afternoon window, have been carried by CBS and FOX, with each network having a virtual lockdown on a conference. CBS carried nearly all the AFC games, which includes the Texans, and FOX carried all the NFC games. The league did away with that methodology this season, and as a result, five of the first seven Texans games of the season will be televised by FOX. After that, all but one remaining game are going to be carried on CBS. Regardless of the network carrying the Texans, assume that it will be the C-list announce teams or below that we will get from the networks’ respective depth chart.
Santa Claus is bringing you Deshaun Watson for Christmas!
If ti feels like the Texans play the Cleveland Browns every season, it’s because for five of the last six seasons, they have. They’ve been playing the Browns so many years in a row that the first time they played each other in this stretch, Deshuan Watson was a rookie starter for the Texans, and in the last one, he was starting his first game for the Browns! Now, ol’ Massage Table Jones himself returns to NRG Stadium again, and this time, it’s on Christmas Eve. I can’t wait to watch Hannah McNair execute Operating Deshaun Snub, Part II, this time in a Santa’s hat:
Merry Christmas, everybody!
By the way, that Cleveland game is sandwiched in between the two games against the Titans, and the game in Tennessee is expected to see the Titans wearing the old Houston Oiler uniforms. That is going to be one tense holiday season!
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
