The NFL’s national TV schedule makes a clear distinction between the Haves and Have-Nots

T he NFL grew into the most popular sports league in the United States largely due to the concept of equity.

But there is no equity when it comes to which teams get to play on national TV. The 2025 NFL schedule, released Wednesday, is a tale of Haves and Have-Nots.

“There’s a lot of opportunities for teams to get exposure, but teams play their way on,” said Hans Schroeder , NFL executive vice president of media distribution. “The Commanders had two guaranteed national windows last year. They’re in 10 this year. They played their way on. They’ve earned it.”

The Haves are mostly the same teams that have dominated the league the past few seasons.

The Chiefs’ Super Bowl blowout loss hasn‘t dulled the networks’ enthusiasm for them. The Chiefs lead the NFL with seven prime-time games — three on Sunday night, two on Monday night, Week 1 Friday night in Brazil, and Christmas night. The Chiefs also play on Thanksgiving, and four other national TV games at 4:25 p.m. Just four of their 16 scheduled games are on Sunday at 1 p.m.

The Super Bowl champion Eagles will be all over your TV, with six prime-time games ( including the Week 1 Kickoff game ), plus the Black Friday afternoon game. The Eagles’ closing stretch is also mostly TBD but tailor-made for TV: at Washington, at Buffalo, vs. Washington.

The Cowboys have six prime-time games plus Thanksgiving and Christmas, because they’re the Cowboys. The Bills have five prime-time games (four in the first six weeks), plus four 4:25 p.m. national games. The Lions get five prime-time games, five games at 4:25 p.m., plus Thanksgiving and Christmas. The 49ers are still booked for five prime-time games even though they are rebuilding.

The one new darling this fall is the Commanders, coming off Jayden Daniels’s electric rookie season. The Commanders have five prime-time games, three Sunday afternoon national games, Christmas Day, and the first-ever game in Madrid. Everyone will be getting rich off Daniels except Daniels, who will make $2.5 million in 2025.

Meanwhile, the Have-Nots are generally the teams that picked at the top of the draft this year. The NFL used to have a rule that each team plays at least once on national TV, but no more. In 2025 the Browns, Titans, and Saints don‘t have any national TV games unless they get flexed into one late in the season. The Colts, Jaguars, Panthers, and Jets only have one prime-time game, and the Raiders and Cardinals have two each.

Even the NFL’s seven international games can be divided up into Haves and Have-Nots. Based on the matchups, you can tell which games the NFL really wants to make a success, and which ones it is less concerned about.

The games in new international markets all have buzzworthy matchups. The NFL chose the Chiefs, the league’s most popular team, to face the Chargers in the second game in Sao Paolo. The first game in Dublin will feature teams with massive followings, the Steelers and Vikings. The first game in Madrid will feature the Dolphins, with a huge Spanish-speaking fan base, and the Commanders, with their exciting young QB.

But the London and Germany matchups aren‘t as exciting, perhaps because the NFL already has built established fan bases there. The London games are Vikings-Browns, Broncos-Jets, and Jaguars-Rams, and the Berlin game is Falcons-Colts, none of which would move the needle much back in the United States. But those games still will sell out almost instantly in Europe.

▪ For many years, the NFL scheduled good but not great games for its Kickoff, Thanksgiving, and international games, under the theory of, “Why waste the top matchups when you’ll watch anyway.” But the NFL is going for the ratings jugular in 2025.

The Kickoff game of Eagles-Cowboys will produce a massive number. Thanksgiving has three huge matchups: Packers-Lions, Bengals-Ravens, and Cowboys-Chiefs, which might break every regular-season audience record. Eagles-Bears on Black Friday will post a big rating. And the NFL is going for all-out annihilation in its war with the NBA over Christmas, scheduling Cowboys-Commanders, Lions-Vikings, and Broncos-Chiefs.

▪ The five toughest schedules based on 2024 win percentage: Giants .574, Bears .571, Lions .571, Eagles .561, and Cowboys, Vikings and Packers tied at .557.

The five easiest schedules: 49ers .415, Saints .419, Patriots .429, Titans .450, and Panthers and Cardinals at .457.

▪ The Cowboys are the first team to get four Thursday games on the schedule, though only one is a traditional Thursday night game. The others are the Kickoff game, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

The Bills, Lions, Packers, Chiefs, Rams, Dolphins, Vikings, and Seahawks all play two Thursday games.

▪ Interesting to see the star-studded Ravens only get one “Sunday Night Football” game, while the Steelers, Falcons, and 49ers were among the teams to get two. The Ravens have a weird schedule, with a three-game home stretch followed immediately by a three-game road stretch, followed immediately by another three-game home stretch.

▪ Aaron Rodgers is expected to sign with the Steelers at some point, but the schedule-makers didn‘t take that into account. If they had, the Week 1 Jets-Steelers game likely would have been in prime time.

“The schedule was built for Coach [ Mike] Tomlin and for the Steelers,” said Mike North , VP of broadcast planning. “And if Aaron decides to play, it probably just makes many, if not all, the Steelers games a little more interesting.”

▪ The Jaguars are this year’s road warriors, with games in San Francisco, Arizona, Las Vegas, Denver, and London.

▪ The NFL needs the Lions to be good again, because their schedule could be epic. Almost every week is a premier matchup: Ravens, Bengals, Chiefs, Commanders, Eagles, Cowboys, Buccaneers, Rams, Steelers, Packers (twice), and Vikings (twice). The Lions are helped by an NFL-best plus-13 rest differential, playing eight games with more rest than their opponents and only one game with less rest.

Week 1 is way too early

No one at the league office asks for my opinion when creating the NFL schedule. That is apparent as ever, as the NFL has leaned into an aspect of the schedule I dislike the most — divisional games in Week 1.

Of the 16 games scheduled for opening weekend, eight will be divisional rivalries, including Cowboys-Eagles, Chiefs-Chargers, Bucs-Falcons, and Lions-Packers.

“I don‘t think there’s any hesitancy on our part to play division games in Week 1,” North said.

In my humble opinion, division games have no business being held in Week 1.

Division games are the most important games on the NFL calendar, as division record is the No. 2 tiebreaker to determine a division winner. Division games count double in the playoff race, since “record in conference games” is the No. 2 tiebreaker for the wild card.

Division games can be the difference between getting a first-round bye or having to play on wild-card weekend. Or getting a home playoff game vs. going on the road. Or making the playoffs vs. watching on TV.

And Week 1 football is awful. As Bill Belichick will tell you, the first four games are an extension of the preseason, especially Week 1. Starters barely have played in the preseason. Games are sloppy. Teams have no idea what they can and can‘t do. Blowouts abound — last season, the Saints beat the Panthers, 47-10, and in 2023, the Cowboys beat the Giants, 40-0. There’s a reason college football teams schedule a couple of nonconference patsies as warm-up games before beginning conference play.

The NFL obviously likes scheduling premier matchups in Week 1. But it doesn‘t have to be division games. Week 1 should be for interconference games, which have the least impact on the playoff race.

When the NFL expanded to 17 games, it added an additional AFC-NFC matchup for each team. The 17th game this season gives us Chiefs-Lions, Eagles-Bills, and Ravens-Rams. All would be perfect for Week 1.

No fan would complain or even notice if divisional games were pushed back to Week 2 or later. They are far too important to schedule on a glorified preseason weekend such as Week 1.

Diversity initiatives given backseat

The NFL has its next round of owners meetings next week in Minnesota, and the two-day session has several interesting items on the docket.

The 32 owners likely will vote on a proposal from the Packers to ban not only the Tush Push, but any play that involves pushing a runner forward. Still unclear is the actual language of the rule, and whether the NFL will simply revert to the previous rule that was on the books until it was rescinded in 2005.

Commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL’s medical experts are heavily in favor of banning the Tush Push and pushing plays, making it likely it gets the 24 owner votes to pass.

The owners also will vote on whether to discontinue the practice of awarding an automatic home playoff game to division winners. Owners have long prioritized division championships, but Goodell is in favor of changing the system to a pure ranking by record.

The owners likely will debate changes to the onside kick, which has reached a historically low rate of recovery (about 5 percent). And the owners will vote on whether to allow active players to participate in the 2028 Olympics flag football competition. The rules would permit only a few players from each team to participate.

But the meeting may be just as notable for what is not taking place — the NFL’s “head coach accelerator” diversity initiative, which was surprisingly canceled last week.

Since 2022 the NFL had been holding accelerators for minority GM and head coaching candidates to introduce owners to a more diverse group of candidates to improve the league’s poor record of minority football hires. The NFL said it will reboot the program in 2026.

“This will allow us to reimagine the program, reflecting on the feedback and engaging with stakeholders so we can ensure a successful program in the future,” NFL chief administrative officer Dasha Smith said.

Left unsaid is that the NFL owners didn‘t take the accelerator program too seriously — several owners (including the Patriots’) skipped the networking events over the years, and rarely hired any of the minority candidates.

Canceling the program also comes in the wake of President Trump’s war on diversity. And it happened just days after Goodell and the NFL puckered up to Trump, allowing him to announce the news of the 2027 draft coming to Washington .

The NFL says it remains committed to the Rooney Rule and other diversity initiatives. Its actions will speak louder.

The ins and outs of his contract

Bill Belichick has been in the news for a lot of wrong reasons lately, but let’s slow down on the idea of him leaving or being fired from North Carolina before coaching a game this fall.

Yes, Belichick‘s buyout decreases on June 1 from $10 million to $1 million, but it’s worth clarifying what that means, because it has confused the issue.

The $1 million buyout is if Belichick wants to leave UNC, like if an NFL team wants to hire him. Belichick would have to pay $1 million to UNC. Of course, no NFL team is calling Belichick these days, and he has no reason to leave.

But if UNC wants to fire Belichick without cause this summer, his five-year, $50 million contract has $30 million fully guaranteed.

While Belichick and his girlfriend have created some unwanted attention for UNC, that hardly qualifies as a “for cause” reason for firing him.

So unless something else major happens this summer, don‘t expect Belichick and UNC to part just yet. Belichick doesn‘t have much interest from the NFL, and UNC almost certainly doesn‘t want to pay Belichick $30 million without him coaching a single game.

Extra points

Every team seems to want to host the NFL Draft these days. The Commanders fought hard to get the 2027 draft, the Bills badly want it in 2028 or 2029, and the Bengals want it for 2029 or 2030. But the Patriots have shown little to no interest, mainly because of the Krafts’ frosty relationship with the Boston mayor’s office dating nearly 30 years and multiple administrations. But if Josh Kraft wins the mayoral election , the NFL Draft and a whole slew of events are probably on the table for Boston … I’m not a curmudgeon. I love how the NFL has turned the draft into a three-day fan fest. And “schedule release week” displays impressive creativity from the teams’ social media departments. But the NFL might want to scale both back just a smidge. This year’s draft in Green Bay got bogged down by turning every pick into a special cause or announcement. And a team finally went too far with its schedule release video, as the Colts had to delete theirs and apologize for violating a rights agreement with Microsoft and making a joke about Tyreek Hill and his arrest last fall. Let’s get back to just announcing the picks and announcing the schedule … I know Mike Vrabel wants to establish his own leaders, but he really might regret cutting veteran long snapper Joe Cardona , who never flubbed a snap in 10 years in Foxborough and had three solo tackles and a forced fumble last season. Upon Cardona’s release, the Dolphins promptly signed him and released both long snappers on their roster, including Blake Ferguson , who held the job the last five years. For Vrabel, ditching a reliable snapper for a rookie is rife with danger … Derek Carr did the Saints a big solid last week, retiring because of a shoulder injury and agreeing to not accept $30 million in guaranteed salary this year. Carr says he’s done, but he’s only 34, and teams are always desperate for QBs. Even if Carr doesn‘t suit up this season, here’s betting we see him in an NFL huddle again … A book excerpt from ESPN‘s Seth Wickersham revealed that Bears QB Caleb Williams didn‘t want to play for the Bears, and that his father tried to circumvent the NFL Draft entirely before they accepted their fate. Lost amid the hubbub is the fact Carl Williams was 100 percent correct. It’s wholly unfair that the NFL Draft and rookie scale artificially capped Caleb Williams’s earning potential and sent him to a team that has failed quarterbacks time and again. In no other industry is a talented college graduate told where he has to work, and how much money he is allowed to make. Unfortunately for Williams, the NFL Players Association negotiated those rights away.