DENVER — Not even the lure of Patrick Mahomes II and the high-scoring Kansas City Chiefs could keep the Broncos in primetime.
NBC's "Sunday Night Football," shown weekly during the NFL season on 9NEWS, was supposed to feature the Broncos-Chiefs game on Dec. 11 at Empower Field at Mile High with kickoff at 6:20 p.m.
But executives must have feared a potential mismatch and decided to flex the Broncos-Chiefs out of that time slot. Instead, the Broncos and Chiefs will kick off at 2:05 p.m. and be shown on CBS.
Sunday Night Football will instead show a more intriguing AFC matchup pitting the 8-3 Miami Dolphins against the 6-5 Los Angeles Chargers.
The Chiefs are 9-2 on the strength of Mahomes, who leads the NFL with 29 touchdown passes and 3,585 passing yards, and the Chiefs' offense, which leads the league with 29.6 points and 430 yards per game.
Compare that to the Broncos, whose quarterback Russell Wilson ranks 28th with eight touchdown passes and the offense is dead last with 14.3 points per game.
Add in the Chiefs have won 13 in a row from the Broncos -- a streak that started in the Broncos' Super Bowl 50 season of 2015 -- and NBC decided it couldn't risk having a lopsided contest on what has traditionally been America's No. 1-rated show.
The Broncos will play at Baltimore this Sunday with kickoff at 11 a.m. MST before returning home to play the Chiefs, four-plus hours earlier than scheduled.
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