Even the NFL seems to regret giving the Baltimore Ravens one significant schedule anomaly in 2024.
For the second year in a row, the Ravens will play on Christmas in 2024. They traveled to face the San Francisco 49ers on the road the previous season and will do so again this time, this time against the Houston Texans.
NFL vice president of broadcast planning Mike North acknowledged that the league had been a touch unfair to the Ravens by assigning them back-to-back Christmas road games during an appearance on the podcast “The Season with Peter Schrager.”
“Looking back, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to ask the Ravens to play on the road on Christmas two years in a row. Prior to Schrager’s intervention, North stated via Ryan Mink.
North did explain that, inevitably, the NFL will want to play big games on holidays, and the league would prefer those games feature the best teams. Right now, that does include the Ravens, though perhaps more care should have been given to the venues.
“We put our biggest games in our biggest windows. Those holiday tentpoles become such good storylines for us and such good results for our broadcast partners,” North added. “You’re going to find the good teams, the teams you think are going to be playoff relevant, in those bigger windows over and over and over again. We probably shouldn’t put the Ravens on the road on Christmas again next year, but excited to see what they do on Christmas this year — definitely.”
The Ravens are not the first team to play on Christmas in consecutive years; in fact, the Kansas City Chiefs are doing it as well. However, every other team has had at least one home game in those two-year spans.
This is not the first time the league has made a regrettable mistake with the schedule. It is probably safe to assume that the Ravens will not be playing a road game on Christmas in 2025.
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