From Emmy winners to Minecraft, the Bears and other NFL teams get creative with schedule-release videos

From Minecraft to Mario Kart, plenty of NFL teams had younger fans in mind while revealing schedules in the growing tradition of videos on social media.

The Los Angeles Chargers and Indianapolis Colts had Minecraft themes, and both poked fun at a fight in a Starbucks between NFL reporters Ian Rapoport and Jordan Schultz that went viral during the NFL combine this year.

The winner for comedic effect Wednesday night was the Bears playing off the common name of new coach Ben Johnson, featuring Emmy Award-winning actor and comedian Lamorne Morris.

Needle in a haystack

Johnson is wearing a Cubs jersey when he says he’s going to be at the game all day and asks Morris to email him the schedule. Morris pretends to know how to send the email, but ends up sending “the entire schedule to every Ben Johnson on the Chicago Bears marketing list.”

The rest of the video is Morris and Bears players, including quarterback Caleb Williams, trying to track down all the Ben Johnsons and destroying computers and cell phones along the way.

Blast from the past

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers celebrated their 50th season with the longest of the 32 videos, a 10-minute version featuring former coach Jon Gruden. The Bucs won their first Super Bowl during the 2002 season under Gruden.

He resigned as coach of the Las Vegas Raiders in 2021 over emails he sent containing racist, homophobic and misogynistic comments seven years before his 2018 hiring by the Raiders.

The double meaning of AI

The video from the Bills started with star quarterback Josh Allen shooting baskets while taking a call from general manager Brandon Beane, who tells him he’s trying to figure out how to reveal the schedule. When Allen says “just use AI,” Beane looks confused and appears to research the term on his computer.

Beane calls retired NBA star Allen Iverson, who reveals the schedule by simply holding up a piece of a paper. Iverson can’t resist the temptation to give his other nickname, “The Answer.”

The pharmaceutical frenzy

The Tennessee Titans decided to poke fun at the countless advertisements for medical treatments, with a spoof called “Schedule-rizi.”

Just as in the real ads, the video includes an exhausting list of potential side effects, before the participants finish by saying, “Thanks, Schedule-rizi.”

Appealing to the kids

Somehow, the Chargers and Colts ended up with the same approach of a Minecraft theme, and both making a spoof of the Rapoport-Schultz scuffle.

They were among a number of videos featuring video games or action figures. The teams included Washington, San Francisco and Seattle.

The Atlanta Falcons appealed to a couple of generations with their Mario Kart theme. The team “selected” promising running back Bijan Robinson as the single player and had his go-kart knocking out Atlanta opponents along the way.