The NFL is banking its Monday Night Football Week 1 opener on two quarterbacks who may not be healthy enough to play in it.
According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the first primetime matchup of the season on the Worldwide Leader’s airwaves will be the Denver Broncos vs. the Kansas City Chiefs, with a site yet to be determined as the NFL is still finalizing its schedule ahead of Thursday’s release.
It remains to be seen whether Patrick Mahomes (torn ACL and LCL) and Bo Nix (fractured ankle) are healthy enough to play. If neither can suit up, the league would settle for Justin Fields versus Jarrett Stidham in its first Monday night window, with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman on the call.
“Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, we know that Patrick Mahomes is not human,” said Buck, who announced the matchup on Good Morning America Tuesday morning. “So, he will. He probably healed after a week. But he’s evidently ahead of schedule. Bo Nix missed the AFC Championship Game with a bad ankle, but he is supposedly good to go and ready for training camp. So, hopeful that within that matchup we get Mahomes and Nix, which makes it that much better.
Mahomes tore his ACL and LCL on Dec. 14, 2025, and has been rehabbing aggressively since. Fox’s Jay Glazer reported in March that Mahomes would be back “by far” before Week 1, and ESPN reported last month that he is on track to participate in the Chiefs’ first OTAs. But Chiefs owner Clark Hunt told Front Office Sports in March that he did not expect Kansas City to appear in Seattle for the season opener precisely because of Mahomes’ status. “From a league standpoint, I think there would be some concern whether our quarterback will be ready to go,” Hunt said. “My guess is the league won’t want to take that risk.”
The league took the risk anyway, just not in Seattle.
NFL VP of broadcasting Mike North laid out the dilemma last month, too, acknowledging that the league faces a genuine problem with how it deploys the Chiefs in primetime this season. The NFL watched what happened last year when it held too much Chiefs primetime inventory for late in the season, and Kansas City ended up on Christmas after Mahomes got hurt and the team had already been eliminated from playoff contention. Saving the big matchups for December is not the answer, but booking them early means gambling on a quarterback still working back from torn knee ligaments.
“I’d hate to save all the Chiefs’ prime time appearances for the end of the season,” North said. “There’s going to have to be something early.”
Broncos-Chiefs in Week 1 is apparently where the league landed.
The Chiefs acquired Justin Fields from the Jets in March for a 2027 sixth-round pick specifically to provide insurance behind Mahomes. Denver has Jarrett Stidham behind Nix, who recently underwent a follow-up procedure on his injured right ankle. Both backups are capable of starting in the NFL — Fields, in particular, has 53 career starts — but a Week 1 Monday Night Football opener between two backup quarterbacks is not the product the league is counting on when it puts Broncos-Chiefs in that window.
The full schedule drops Thursday.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.