NFL Schedule Release Tweets -- Paul Kuharsky Ranks The Best and Worst

The NFL schedule release has become the biggest day for every team’s social media team.
 
Those groups have known the opponents and locations of the games since the end of the 2020 regular season, so they’ve had months to formulate and execute a clever idea and one-up their competition with a schedule-release video.

When teams learned the dates of games this week, they added final touches and then, Thursday night at 8 pm ET, they filled up Twitter.

I combed through them all to find the best of the best, and I give a special round of applause to these five, with an honorable mention to the cinematic work of the 49ers.


5) The Falcons' slick little marble run is fun, and it achieves a video-maker’s ideal – it makes you re-watch if you want to see everything. You can easily miss references to the Chargers and Steelers. And I’m still not certain what the trash bag and dumpster are about, but they aren’t there by accident. It also runs on a nice loop. Totally different than anything else that came out of the evening.

4) At over 7 minutes, the Seahawks' prank release is really long. But boy are players pissed when they learn they play on both Thanksgiving and Christmas, don’t have a bye after their game in Germany and have a stretch of three games in 11 days. It gets to the point where the team is stretching things just to see how gullible the players are, and the answer is way more than you would have expected when the whole thing started.

3) No one will rival the star power of the Broncos’ video, with Russell Wilson taking over for Peyton Manning as the team’s summer intern and losing track of Denver’s schedule, which winds up in the hands of John Elway. Wilson really hams it up as the nerdy intern trying to mimic Manning’s success, and Manning, as usual, does his part in the skit well. As with the Seahawks’ work, the schedule is an afterthought here that shows up at the end.

2) The Chargers kind of answer their own question when they ask if they should do their schedule release in anime. Or do they? The “NO” in big letters is made up of little yeses. On first pass, you may agree with the big letters. On second pass, you won’t. There are shots galore here. Urban Meyer, Deshaun Watson, Kyler Murray and Antonio Brown are among the targets. It gets better the more you watch it and peel the layers. A bold choice, well executed. A narrow miss for the top spot for me.

That soundtrack is “Dream within a Dream” by Hideyuki Asada, by the way. Catchy tune. Was in my head as I went to bed after watching all of these.

1) The New York Jets! This is clever, funny, and unexpected. We get play-by-play and color commentary, plus audio of coaches and players set to cartoon action of stuff it was never intended to be paired with. The result is fantastic. Brace yourself for a puppy for Christmas, a stop at the Seattle fish market and solar panels in dire need in ways you never imagined. Bravo.

Duds:

Green Bay’s Green and Gold Tee.

The Bears’ trick shots.

The Dolphins’ Stadium Tour T.

The Browns’ banner word scramble.
 
The Saints' never-ending game night.



Paul Kuharsky co-hosts OutKick 360 weekdays from 3-6 ET. You can read more of his work at PaulKuharsky.com.