It’s still a Chiefs and Cowboys world, but the Washington Commanders are joining the A-list this year.
The newly resurgent capital city NFL team has been scheduled in eight nationally televised games and three more in late-Sunday afternoon windows with limited competition, according to the NFL schedule released tonight.
It’s a strong show of enthusiasm from the NFL’s Park Avenue headquarters and media rights holders in the Commanders, who are rejuvenating a long-dormant fan base after making the NFC Championship Game in quarterback Jayden Daniels’ first season.
But the Chiefs and Cowboys are still the NFL’s television bell cows. The Chiefs are the only team in seven primetime slots -- including the league’s debut appearance on YouTube in the Sept. 5 game against the Chargers in Brazil -- playing twice more in daytime games with no other concurrent games, and three times in the featured 4:25 spot with limited competition.
Meanwhile, the Cowboys play six primetime games, two daytime standalone games, and four games in the featured 4:25 window.
Mike Mulvihill, Fox Sports’ president of insights and analytics, praised the league for bringing more teams into the top tier of TV attractions.
“We did talk pretty openly about not relying as much on Dallas as we traditionally did,” he said. “The league has been very reliant on the Cowboys and Chiefs, and we wanted to recognize we’ve got other good stories to tell.”
More takeaways from the schedule drop:
- CBS will ride Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs as far as they’ll go this year, featuring the Chiefs four times in national or quasi-national windows and up to 9 times overall.
The national games include Buffalo at Kansas City on Sunday, Nov. 2 – the only game in the late window that day – and Kansas City at Dallas at 4pm on Thanksgiving Day, routinely the most-watched regular season window regardless of matchup.
Of that Thanksgiving game, CBS Sports President David Berson said: “I’m not going to make predictions, but you would not be alone among media today in predicting that will be the number one most viewed game of the season, and perhaps ever.”
CBS is contractually guaranteed eight Chiefs games, but could get a 9th depending on the Week 18 schedule, which isn’t published in detail until Week 17 is concluded.
Other featured CBS matchups in the 4:25 window include: September 7’s NFC North tilt of Lions at Packers, and Sept. 28’s Baltimore-Kansas City, Cincinnati-Green Bay for Week 6, and Dallas-Denver for Week 8.
CBS will air 12 Patriots games, 11 Steelers games, 10 for Ravens, Jets and Browns, 9 for the Bills, Bengals and Broncos. “Let’s see if [Aaron] Rodgers is going to be with Pittsburgh, that could be compelling,” Berson said.
- Fox just gets one Chiefs game, but it’s a big one. Fox will air a Week 2 Super Bowl rematch between Kansas City and Philadelphia. Fox gets three Buffalo Bills games this year.
- Fox will have only three Dallas games in their 4:25pm late Sunday windows this year – down from five in 2024. While the Cowboys always draw good audiences, Mulvihill said Fox lobbied the league for more diversity in the lineup to spotlight other great stories with big fan bases.
“Did we really take full advantage of Detroit last year?” Mulvihill said. “Did we really take full advantage of Philly last year? We‘re excited to see more of Buffalo too.”
- After seeing leaguewide viewership decline 2% last year, the NFL has put a disproportionate share of big games in the first month of the season, hoping to spur a strong viewership narrative out of the gate. Nielsen’s latest methodological changes, such as another expansion of out-of-home viewer measurement, is likely to “give everyone a boost” said Mulvihill. “I feel like the league is taking advantage of that, pushing some really big games into September, to make sure everyone can get a really positive start.”
- Fox believes it got a better deal this year in cross-flexing, the AFC-v-AFC games that historically were owned by CBS but are available to Fox in the new media rights deal. Last year, CBS got Packers-Rams and Eagles-Cowboys. “I think the cross flexing is probably more balanced than it has been in the past,” Mulvihill said.
- All four of the two-game “Monday Night Football” slates will occur in the first seven weeks of the season. ESPN worked to keep those two-game nights from being placed late in the season, when one of the two games might become irrelevant and experience a precipitous drop off in audience. That happened in Week 15 last year to a Falcons-Raiders game.
“As you’d imagine, by moving them all up, early in the season, that should make sure that all those games are meaningful,” said ESPN vice president of programming Tim Reed.
- Simulcasts of ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” on ABC continue to expand. This year, it will air on both channels 11 times, including 10 games already identified and 1 additional game to be named later. ABC will show three games exclusively as part of the early season twin bills. Last year, the NFL drew the ire of ESPN competitors by adding simulcasts shortly before the season started.
- In a four-week stretch starting Oct. 27, “Monday Night Football” will feature the Cowboys twice, the Chiefs, the Eagles and the Commanders. All four games are ESPN/ABC simulcasts. Earlier in the year, a Week 3 “MNF” matchup between the Lions and Ravens is worth highlighting on the calendar.
- NBC‘s “Sunday Night Football” package looks best on the biggest days, said NBC Sports President Rick Cordella. After the already announced kickoff game between the Cowboys and Eagles, NBC comes back on Sunday of Week One with Ravens at Bills.
Then, NBC will have Packers at Cowboys on Sept. 28 to follow the Ryder Cup conclusion earlier that day, and Bengals at Ravens on Thanksgiving Night.
Peacock’s streaming exclusive will be Saturday, Dec. 27, in Week 17, with a matchup to be determined from a five-game pool of Saturday games.
- This is the second season that teams can play more than once on Amazon Prime’s “Thursday Night Football,” a key step toward improving the quality of those games. Two of the six teams playing twice this year include the Super Bowl champion Eagles and the Buffalo Bills.
“That’s really big for Thursday Night Football to get the Super Bowl champions on the schedule twice,” said Amazon head of US sports video Jeff Kaiser. (The Dolphins, Broncos, Seahawks and Rams are the others.)
- Divisional matchups will be less prominent this year on “Thursday Night Football,” with 10 in-division games instead of 12. “We love divisional games, they can really pay off,” Kaiser said. Divisional games can lead to extremes; when good, they carry outsized weight for playoff positions. When bad, they risk irrelevancy outside of the division.
- As always, Week 18 is a blank slate, with all 32 teams scheduled to play the same day and all times and TV assignments to be determined.
Primetime appearances by team:
- 7: Chiefs
- 6: Cowboys
- 5: Dolphins, Falcons, Lions, Eagles, Commanders, Bills, Chargers, 49ers
- 4: Ravens, Bengals, Steelers, Texans, Broncos, Packers, Vikings, Bucs, Rams, Seahawks.
