How The 2015 New York Jets Schedule Was Made

A big thanks to our New England Patriots blog for the article idea here, but I found it really interesting, so I hope you do too.

The 2015 schedule was recently released by the NFL and the amount of work that goes into perfecting it was just staggering. So many things affect a schedule, including the baseball play-offs, some Taylor Swift concerts and even the Pope himself.

So I ran through the article to locate anything that affected the Jets schedule and I've listed them below. Our schedule was affected by ratings, the Pope, our Super Bowl win and many other factors.

• We were considered for a Thanksgiving game against Dallas. However the league decided that they didn't want to the Jets to play on a short week and the match-up between New York and Dallas would get huge ratings on its own, and it didn't need the bump from the Thanksgiving schedule.
• Philadelphia couldn't play at home in weeks 1, 3 or 4. The Phillies dictated two of those, but one came as a result of the Pope giving mass in Philadelphia to over 2 million people on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in week 3. So instead of scheduling the Eagles to be at home, they were put on the road, against the Jets.
  
• Rex is back. Due to the rules that a team can only play one short week game a year, us not playing on Thanksgiving meant the NFL could nationally televise Rex Ryan's return to New York, that will happen in week 10 as Buffalo comes to town.
  
• This year the NFL wants to emphasize Super Bowl match-ups. That's the reason for the Jets/Colts game on Monday Night Football.
• The Jets didn't get the opening game of the season against the Patriots because we don't have a Quarterback, well at least because it was believed Pittsburgh and Philadelphia (another team considered) would be a more competitive game than the Jets/Patriots.

There are so many interesting bits of information in this article, so I suggest you head on over and give it a read.