NFL 2025 Schedule

 After slowly trickling out individual games one-by-one for a few days, the NFL finally released the full 2025 schedule on Wednesday.  I get why they do this individual reveals.  They give each network a chance to give a little teaser for their best game(s) during the season.  But I still don't like it.  Announce the international games, but only the matchups.  And announcing the season-opening Thursday night game hosted by the Super Bowl champion is fine.  I'll even give you who the Cowboys and Lions are hosting on Thanksgiving.  But knowing random single games definitely takes some of the suspense out of the schedule release.

Anyway, as expected, teams like the Chiefs, Eagles, Cowboys, Bills and Ravens will be featured in standalone games a lot!  The Chiefs, Cowboys and Lions are all playing on both Thanksgiving and Christmas.  And they're touting the fact that the Vikings are playing back-to-back international games in different countries, but that comes with an asterisk.  They're playing in Dublin and London.  They're 500 miles apart!  That's basically the same as traveling from New York to Buffalo!

Both of Minnesota's international games will be on NFL Network, which will have all six of the 9:30 AM games from Europe as part of its eight-game package.  They'll also have their standard Week 17 doubleheader, although that used to be a tripleheader, but the third game is Peacock's exclusive game now.  The five options are Seahawks-Panthers, Cardinals-Bengals, Ravens-Packers, Texans-Chargers and Giants-Raiders.  My early guess is that Ravens-Packers and Texans-Chargers will be two of the Saturday games, with one on Peacock and the other on NFL Network, and the other NFL Network game will be Cardinals-Bengals.

There's also a Saturday doubleheader in Week 16: Packers-Bears and Eagles-Commanders, both on FOX.  The order is still TBA, but it's notable that the NFL kept this doubleheader on the schedule.  Last season, they went head-to-head against the College Football Playoff quarterfinals on that Saturday.  Many football fans didn't like that and hoped it would be a one-year thing.  I guess not!

The NBA also has to get used to the idea of sharing Christmas with the NFL.  That Netflix Christmas doubleheader isn't going anywhere.  This year, it'll have the two traditional Thanksgiving teams, but on the road and in the reverse order--Dallas at Washington, followed by Detroit at Minnesota.  The Chiefs have made it publicly known that they want to be the NFL's "Christmas team," and it looks like they're getting their wish.  They host Denver in the Christmas nightcap, which will be a regular Thursday Night Football game on Amazon.

I know a lot of people are sick of the Chiefs, but there's a reason why they're featured so often.  They're a ratings draw.  That's why it was kind of surprising to see their game in Dallas was scheduled for Thanksgiving.  It'll probably end up being the highest-rated Thanksgiving game in history.  The Thanksgiving late game is always highly-rated anyway.  Which is why I pretty much just assumed they'd make Cowboys-Chiefs a standalone Sunday 4:25 game.

Counting featured Sunday 4:25 games (Week 18 they're at Las Vegas, so that has to be late, but I'm not counting it right now), Kansas City has 11 games in national windows--six in primetime, Thanksgiving, and four late Sunday kickoffs (against Philadelphia, Baltimore, Buffalo and Denver...my guess is CBS & FOX wanted to make sure they got marquee Chiefs games, as well)!  They don't have a Sunday 1:00 kickoff until Week 7!

While it wasn't "official" until the schedule came out, one of the worst kept secrets in the NFL was that the Chiefs are the Chargers' opponent in the Friday night Brazil Week 1 game.  For the first time, that game will be broadcast on YouTube, which adds another broadcaster/streamer to the fold.  In total, NFL games will be shown in 11 different places this season (CBS, FOX, NBC, ABC, ESPN, NFL Network, Amazon, ESPN+, Peacock, Netflix and, now,YouTube)!

More on this in a future post, but Monday Night Football makes a full-time return to its longtime home of ABC.  And the NFL is continuing to experiment with two Monday night games in some weeks--one only on ESPN, the other only on ABC.  Although, that has me curious about Week 4.  The Jets are the ESPN-only game while Bengals-Broncos is on ABC.  But, as part of the NFL's broadcast agreement, every game has to be available on over-the-air TV in home markets, which usually means they get flipped over to the ABC affiliate.  So, if the Jets-Dolphins game gets moved to ABC, what happens to Bengals-Broncos?  Does that move to ESPN?  Or will the secondary Jets-Dolphins broadcast be on a different station instead?

And the Jets' no longer having Aaron Rodgers resulted in a significant decrease in their number of national games.  After two years of Jets overload in primetime, they have a grand total of two primetime games this season--Monday night in Week 4 at Miami and Thursday night in Week 11 at New England.  They're also playing Denver in London, so that's three.  But, otherwise, the Jets are back to the way things used to be.  Their other 13 currently-scheduled games are Sunday at 1:00.

But, still, two primetime games is two more than three other teams.  In a move that I'm sure will infuriate the Shedeur Sanders Fan Club, Cleveland's only national game is their matchup with Minnesota in London.  The Titans don't even have that.  They're currently scheduled for 17 Sunday afternoons.  So are the Saints, which is kind of surprising since NFC South division games usually end up on Thursday or Monday night at least once.

Equally surprising is some of the teams that do have primetime games.  The Panthers play in San Francisco on a Monday night.  Jacksonville-Kansas City is also on a Monday night for some reason.  The Giants have three primetime games, including a Sunday night.  Although, that makes sense since they're one of those teams who'll get primetime games every season no matter what.  Same with the Raiders, who have three.  Arizona has two.  New England has three (including both New York teams).  The Bears have three, plus Black Friday and that Week 16 Saturday game.  I don't know why the NFL is so insistent on giving Chicago so many national games every season, but they do, so I guess I'd better get used to it.

Believe it or not, the Bears have as many national games as the defending champion Eagles!  Philadelphia getting Dallas in the opener surprised some people, but the selection makes sense.  An Eagles-Cowboys game is usually on Sunday Night Football every season anyway, and they haven't played in Week 1 since 2000.  No worry, though.  Philadelphia will be featured plenty.  Likely at FOX's request, they have a lot of Sunday 4:25 games, including the Super Bowl rematch in Week 2 (had the Chiefs won, I think this would've been the season opener).

It seems like the NFL has made a concerted effort to make the Sunday Night, Monday Night and Thursday Night Football schedules at least somewhat comparable.  Sunday night obviously still has the best matchups on paper, but they've got some clunkers, too.  The Thursday night schedule has a lot of division games, but they're good division games.  I'd even venture to say that it's a stronger schedule than Monday Night Football got.

As has been the case every year since 2010, Week 18 features all division games.  The last two years, they've gotten lucky.  Game 272 in 2023 was Buffalo at Miami, where the Bills would either win the division or miss the playoffs entirely.  Then last year, they got Lions-Vikings for the No. 1 seed in the NFC.  It's obviously way too early to make a prediction which game will be picked for the Sunday night finale on Jan. 4, 2026, but four options that stand out are Green Bay-Minnesota, Washington-Philadelphia, Baltimore-Pittsburgh and Seattle-San Francisco.  My very early guess is that it'll be one of those.

NBC has the Super Bowl, which will be part of a very busy month of February for them.  They worked it into the contract that their turn in the Super Bowl rotation falls in Winter Olympic years, and they have the NBA All-Star Game again starting this season, too.  I'm worried about Mike Tirico.  I don't think he'll be sleeping much in February, especially since this will be the first time he does play-by-play for the Super Bowl!