A Look at 2025's Holiday NFL Games

The 2025 NFL season is closing in, folks! We are six weeks away from the regular season, and the annual Hall of Fame Game--the first preseason game of the year--is a week away! I had said before that when it comes to discussing the 2025 schedule, I was doing something different: dividing them into parts. First off, I wrote about what has been the most important part of the schedule in the last two decades, Sunday Night Football. This was followed by a piece about Thursday Night Football, as well as my story about the international games. For this story, we will look into this year's holiday games; the games that will take place on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Christmas.

So let's get this party started, shall we?

Thanksgiving & Black Friday

Pro football on Thanksgiving Day has actually been played even before the NFL's existence, but since the league's start in 1920, games have been played on Turkey Day, with the exception of a four year break between 1941 and 1944 because of World War II. Of course, the two teams who are most tied to Thanksgiving are the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys, and regarding the former, the Lions started hosting Thanksgiving games in 1934. Entering the 2025 season, the Lions are 38-45-2 on Thanksgiving. As for the Cowboys, they started hosting Thanksgiving games in 1966, and they have a 34-22-1 overall record. Regarding Black Friday, it wasn't until 2023 that the NFL finally started scheduling a game for that day after Thanksgiving, when people were done with their shopping, they could return home for an early game before dining on leftovers.

The Thanksgiving Day schedule had been somewhat unpredictable prior to the merger, but it was after the merger that the schedule was set. Two afternoon games; a very early game in Detroit (at 12:30PM Eastern Standard Time) and a later game in Dallas (at 4PM EST). In 2006, a third game, a primetime game, was added for Thanksgiving, and the third game was usually a top tier matchup. The early games aired on CBS and Fox, with the Lions and Cowboys swapping networks every year, and regarding the primetime game, it aired on NFL Network until 2011. 2012 saw NBC takeover airing the Thanksgiving primetime game, and that year was the game between the New England Patriots and the New York Jets, the game that featured the infamous "butt fumble." As for Black Friday, that game airs on Amazon Prime and has since it started two years ago.

This year's slate will feature the Detroit Lions hosting the Green Bay Packers to kick off the four-game blended Thanksgiving holiday. With this, the Packers continue to have played every year on Thanksgiving with Jordan Love as starting QB. As a Packers fan, I don't recall us having this much Turkey Day exposure with either Brett Favre or Aaron Rodgers as QB. Packers/Lions will air on Fox. After that, CBS will air the Dallas Cowboys hosting the Kansas City Chiefs (that should be a good one), and on NBC primetime, it's an AFC North battle between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Baltimore Ravens. If last year's two matchups are any indication, this meeting will be an offense-filled explosion. On Black Friday, on Prime Video, it's the Philadelphia Eagles hosting the Chicago Bears--the first Black Friday game to feature NFC teams.

Christmas

For the longest time, the NFL and Christmas never really co-existed, usually because for decades, the season ended a bit before Christmas, and the championship game often took place after the holiday. We wouldn't see actual NFL games on Christmas until 1971, the second year of the merged NFL, and those were playoff games. It was the first two games of the Divisional Playoff, which served as the opening round of the playoffs until the 1978 season. First off was the NFC game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Minnesota Vikings, which the Cowboys won, 20-12. After that, it was the AFC game between the Miami Dolphins and the Kansas City Chiefs, which saw the game actually reach double overtime and end with the Dolphins winning, 27-24, in the longest game in NFL history.

The NFL spent a long time avoiding Christmas until 1989, but even so, Christmas games were sporadic. This is because Christmas can fall on days that don't normally air NFL games, but that only covers Tuesday and (until very recently) Wednesday. The only shift that the NFL would pull would occur if Christmas actually landed on a Sunday, as on that occasion, the regional coverage games would air that Saturday, Christmas Eve, while Christmas Sunday would have a small number of games--one of them being Sunday Night Football. Since 2020, the NFL has scheduled games on Christmas Day, regardless of what day the holiday falls on, and it was last year that the NFL began airing Christmas Day games on Netflix.

This year, Christmas falls on a Thursday, which means we get three games on the holiday. For the second year in a row, the Christmas schedule includes a pair of games on Netflix. First off, it's an NFC East battle between the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Commanders, followed by an NFC North battle between the Detroit Lions and the Minnesota Vikings. Then, it's Amazon Prime's turn, and they'll have an AFC West battle between the Denver Broncos and the Kansas City Chiefs.

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I always did love the holiday games, because the holidays fall late in the regular season, during the climax of the playoff races. Thanksgiving starts off the season's home stretch, usually kicking off Week 13, while Christmas comes very late, usually at Week 16 or 17 depending on the calendar. This year's holiday slate of games will be quite awesome, especially since they're mostly divisional! Here's to what should be an epic NFL regular season coming up!