Los Angeles Chargers director of creative video David Bretto has a simple mandate for his team. They could be watching a movie or television or playing a video game, even in the middle of the offseason. Could be June or July.
“Your brain should always be thinking in schedule-releases terms,” Bretto told USA TODAY Sports. “We’re constantly on the search for what we’re going to do in next year’s schedule release (video).”
That prioritization of the schedule-release video is why, for the past three years, the Chargers’ have dominated the Internet, with the team’s social media and creative content teams flexing on the rest of the NFL.
There was the video set in “The Sims” reality (2024), an anime-focused production (2022) and a video that existed in the Minecraft universe (2025).
The Chargers, and their 31 counterparts, have the chance to do something with their annual schedule release video — the NFL schedule will be formally revealed in full Thursday, May 14, at 8 p.m. ET — that often evades them for the rest of the football calendar.
“It’s a big day for the league that has, one way or another, evolved into a big day for social-media departments as well,” Los Angeles Rams director of social media and influencer partnerships Kurt Gies told USA TODAY Sports.
Teams use a variety of mediums to convey the 17 regular-season matchups for the fall: animation, social-media influencers, nostalgia, celebrities. All of it is doused with humor, and oftentimes, jabs at other teams.
“So many things in the NFL are serious and it’s about the game and the competition,” Atlanta Falcons chief marketing officer Shannon Joyner told USA TODAY Sports. “I think NFL schedule-release night is that one NFL roast, where teams are able to let loose for a little bit.”
NFL schedule release is final offseason ‘tentpole’ event
For most leagues, the “off” in offseason means something. Not in the NFL.
“Basically, the NFL likes to make something out of nothing,” Bretto said. “The entire offseason is now tentpole driven.”
The combine and free agency in March and the draft in April provides the league with a staggered cadence that maintains the attention of the populace. The schedule release “is kind of like the newest addition to the laundry list of big event the NFL has taking place in the offseason,” Bretto said.
But this one doesn’t have to do much with football. But like a team hoisting the Lomardi Trophy, NFL creative departments spend months — the process begins in January or February for most teams — brainstorming ideas and ultimately executing them.
“It’s kind of become the Super Bowl for creatives in a way,” said Bretto, who previously worked for the Philadelphia 76ers and Los Angeles Clippers.
For Jason Lavine, the Chargers’ senior vice president of creative and content, the schedule release is an opportunity to achieve the business goal of prioritizing earned media.
“We look for people, specifically, who have unique brains, who can help us,” Lavine said. “Because our voice is reflected through schedule release but takes on a very different vibe than what we are 364 days per year.”
It also comes with the chance to take more liberties than normal.
“This moment is a singular moment where every team goes outside the bounds of what they would typically do,” Lavine said. “Our voice is intended to create generational fandom and you do that by meeting people where they are, and using the platforms how they should be used. Our voice should feel energetic. It should be a little bit trolly. It should be youthful, in a sense. It should feel like you’re talking with your friends.”
Sports teams and brands have grown in terms of constant storytelling and being able to be their own media content engines year-round, Joyner said. Fans demand premium, high-quality content — and the schedule release is the ideal window for it. All 32 teams show up in 32 different ways. Falcons director of digital platforms Ryan Delgado said that this is the first offseason event that truly looks forward to the 2026 season.
NFL social media teams also have the added advantage of highlighting 17 regular-season games, compared to either 82 regular-season NBA or 162 regular-season MLB games, for example.
“This is a big tentpole for us,” Gies said, adding that every mid-May is “an opportunity to not just be speaking to Rams fans or football fans, which is probably a majority of our content coming out … this is an opportunity to reach a wider audience.”
In 2025, the Rams capitalized on celebrity fan Branda Song’s displeasure following their playoff loss to the Philadelphia Eagles earlier that year. The team used that connection to have her perform a newscast sketch revealing the schedule.
That intersection of sports and culture has “been a big home run for us,” Bretto said. His Chargers’ creative team often relies on the passions of staffers — whether it was The Sims or Minecraft — to take the video to the next level.
“That’s been a big hack for us, is branching out of the sports sphere and touching on fandoms,” he said. “The videos are a place where different people with different likes and interests can come together and have fun with it.”
Competition between NFL teams drives schedule release video creativity
Volume metrics (the number of views, for example) are one way Bretto and the Chargers measure success. Their 2025 video reached 17.2 million views on X in the first 18 hours it was posted. Then there are the intangible elements, such as feeling like they had the a wide-ranging video. In the past couple years, the Chargers team feels like it has excelled in storytelling and left a lasting impact beyond the NFL community.
Any time competition is involved, Bretto wants to embody the Chargers who take the field and beat other teams.
“We want to do as best as possible, and that starts with hiring a bunch of really creative people,” he said.
The Falcons, Delgado said, try to layer various elements of pop culture, celebrity and football to maximize reach. Another question he tries to answer is how the Falcons’ brand wins after 8 p.m. ET the day the schedule comes out.
“And you kind of see where the chips may fall,” Delgado said, adding: “You’re competing against the entirety of the internet.”
Joyner pointed out that there is no formula to go viral. But comedy is always a surefire to grease the wheels of appeal because everybody wants to laugh.
Sometimes, the simpler ideas become big winners over monthlong productions. The classic example is the Tennessee Titans’ 2023 “man-on-the-street” video from downtown Nashville in which random folks guessed the logos of NFL teams. Atlanta was one of a handful of teams to hop on the “Game of Thrones” trend in 2018 that also cut through the online clutter.
“There is no secret formula to why these reach folks, resonate and make some noise,” Delgado said.
Social-media teams don’t affect the on-field product. But when it comes to the schedule release, they can shine, said Gies, who wouldn’t refer to it as “the Super Bowl” — the actual big game is in his mind — but is an event that matters nonetheless.
“It’s even more of a motivation to say ‘This idea is really good,’ ‘This jab at this team is really good,’” Gies said. “I think it allows people to dig deep and show their competitiveness.
“You’re really competing with other teams whether you had the best schedule release or not.”
The last 48 hours and a dash to the finish line
Delgado and Joyner joked that, one day, the Falcons will post a simple graphic of the schedule and call it a day.
That day is not this year, or likely next year, though.
Instead, the final 48 hours leading up to the schedule release often involves constant editing to make sure the video is in the proper chronological order, “almost like ‘Minority Report,’ trying to move around different parts of videos trying to sequentially get the opponents in the correct order,” Joyner said.
One fix teams have resorted to is inserting the full-schedule graphic at some point in the video rather than having it play out week-by-week. The audience will find the schedule in a variety of formats, Joyner said. The video satisfies the storytelling side of it.
Knowing the opponents since the end of the regular season means teams can conceptualize the scenes, the jokes and the stories. But they don’t know the sequence of those elements until the schedule comes out.
“We just try to rapidly assemble when the NFL tells us when we’re playing these opponents,” Bretto said. “It’s a fun challenge.”
Gies said shooting as much footage as possible in the weeks leading up to the release helps the Rams ensure the video flows. The Rams have their process down to a science by creating different scenes and rearranging them within that 48-hour window. Gies said he will receive the schedule from Rams leadership and run it to the video room, where he’ll remain attached to the editor’s hip for the next two days to nail it down.
“It really is just giving yourself as much leeway, as much content as possible to be able to make it work and make it flow,” he said.
And hopefully make it a schedule-release video to remember.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Chargers, NFL teams create viral NFL schedule release videos