The NFL is counting on the Joe Burrow Bengals as they bid for their fourth straight winning season and third AFC North title in four years during eight national television windows this season.

“Not only are we counting on them, but that’s what the fans have come to expect. That’s what the fans are asking for,” says Mike North, the NFL’s vice president of broadcast planning.

“Every time a fan interacts with the National Football League, they’re telling us what they care about. Whether watching television, listening to a podcast, buying a hat or jersey, putting a player on their fantasy team, following someone on Instagram, and the Bengals are getting to be one of those top-tier teams our fans care about week in and week out.”

Two of those teams the Bengals are closing the gap on in that department, the two-time Super Bowl champion Chiefs and the perennially popular Cowboys, are foes in two of those matchups. They’re in Kansas City for a 4:25 p.m. Sept. 15 Sunday game and in Dallas for a Dec. 9 Monday Nighter.

That matches up Burrow with two of his fellow franchise quarterbacks on contending teams, the kind of game the NFL can’t resist. North says it’s time to elevate those late Sunday afternoons into a prime-time mindset.

“The truth is those 4:25 Sunday games are the most watched window the NFL has,” North says. “Monday night can be somewhere between 16-18 million, but go to a Sunday afternoon and get a close game down to the wire with two big brands and two star quarterbacks, you can get 28-30 million people watching. Hard not to look at that as a pretty good estimate of what we think of them.”

The Bengals get three of those 4:25s. Along with the Chiefs, they host the Eagles in one Oct. 27 and then do it again a month later in Los Angeles against the Chargers.

But Burrow and fellow 2020 draft quarterback Justin Herbert aren’t the only draws in that Chargers game. The NFL took notes of backup Jake Browning‘s 4-3 stint in the wake of Burrow’s season-ending wrist injury.