I’m annoyed. And you, the Kansas City Chiefs, and all of Chiefs Kingdom should be annoyed too. Why? The Chiefs have been given a dud start to the season by the NFL. To make matters worse, this ridiculous situation was entirely foreseeable and totally avoidable.
Here’s why you should be mad.
The Chiefs opened the season with a long-haul trip to Brazil, to say the least. They traveled more than 5,300 miles on an 11-hour flight to São Paulo, making that same trip back to Kansas City four days later.
✈️ Our Most Tracked Flight of the Day: United Airlines charter #UA3814, carrying the Kansas City Chiefs from Kansas City to São Paulo! 🏈🇧🇷@aero_in pic.twitter.com/mwyjFD7opA
— AirNav Radar (@AirNavRadar) September 3, 2025
I have no issue with this. The Los Angeles Chargers had to make the same journey as well, as did Green Bay and Philadelphia last year. The real problem comes with what awaits the Chiefs now that they’ve returned to the States.
Kansas City will face a Week 2 contest against the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles, arguably the toughest test in the NFL right now. To make things even harder, Kansas City will head into that game with a huge, inexcusable disadvantage that’s been handed to them by the NFL: a lack of rest.
There’s no reason for the NFL to treat the Chiefs’ scheduled like this.
K.C.’s season opener was played on Friday night, a deliberate move by the league to give the Chiefs and Chargers more time to recover after their intercontinental trip before their next game. But that extra time goes out the window because Kansas City is playing an Eagles team that will be coming off more rest than the Chiefs had.
Philly opened the new NFL season on Thursday night at home against Dallas, a privilege justly awarded to the reigning Super Bowl champions.
But that means they’ll have a full extra day’s rest over the Chiefs heading into Sunday’s game at Arrowhead, without the added burden of having to travel 10,000-plus miles to another continent and back.
It’s ridiculous.
The most frustrating part about this situation is how avoidable this was, how unnecessary this disparity is.
The NFL chose to have Kansas City open the season in Brazil, and that’s fair enough. The Chiefs are a huge global brand, international games are a part of the NFL now, and every team has to play them. Fine.
But usually those overseas games are followed by a bye week, like what happened in 2023 after Kansas City played the Miami Dolphins in Germany.
Of course, the Chiefs aren’t going to be given a bye after literally one game. But what the NFL can do is schedule the Chiefs to play literally any team other than Philadelphia or the Dallas Cowboys –the two teams more rested than they are – in Week 2.
Seriously, it’s not rocket science. The NFL could have simply chosen any other matchup instead. Even another road game would be better than this. But alas, here we are.
At the end of the day, the Chiefs won’t complain. Chiefs Head Coach Andy Reid said the timing of games is just part of the season. “Listen, you get to the point where you just say, ‘We’ve got to play everybody,” Reid told SiriusXM before the Brazil game. “Last year we played every day but Tuesday, so you get into the mindset of we’ll play anybody, anywhere. A CVS parking lot, we don’t care, let’s go play.”
But just because the Chiefs will be ready to play anywhere at any time, doesn’t mean they should be forced to. Last season, they played three games in 11 days in the lead-up to Christmas. Now, they’re facing a huge rest disadvantage right from the start of the new season
Is this a big deal? On the surface, maybe not. But the fact that the imbalance is so obvious and that the solution to removing it is so simple and fully under the league’s control is what makes it so incredibly frustrating.
The NFL can do better. The NFL needs to do better.
