NFL Teams in Primetime: A Curious Pattern
NFL fans have been observing the Falcons play three consecutive primetime games, which raises some interesting questions about scheduling.
Mike Florio from Pro Football Talk proposed a theory suggesting that the league might be testing the waters with this scheduling. He speculated that the NFL could be experimenting with having the same team appear in primetime week after week. This could be a preliminary step toward potentially introducing games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which would require some creative scheduling strategies, like having a team play on a Thursday one week, then a Wednesday the next, and a Tuesday after that.
This season, the NFL has employed a unique strategy of placing several teams in back-to-back primetime slots, including the Rams in the first three weeks, the Falcons in weeks 3-5, the Cowboys in 5-7, the Seahawks in 6-8, and the Bears in 7-9.
Interestingly, an unnamed NFL representative told Forbes that the increased frequency of primetime games for certain teams wasn’t planned. Instead, it was described as a byproduct of the complex scheduling for the entire 272-game season, taking into account factors like opponents, stadium availability, and network requests.
Statistics from Awful Announcing indicated that there were no instances of teams having multiple consecutive primetime games in 2025. Yet, oddly enough, the Packers had a stretch of four primetime games in 2024.
Moreover, it’s worth noting that the NFL now claims many key dates within the calendar, having controversially usurped Christmas Day from the NBA and expanded its Thanksgiving offerings to seize Black Friday as well.
This year marked the NFL’s deliberate decision to kick off on a Wednesday, a rare move that had only occurred once before in 2012 when they shifted a Giants-Cowboys game to avoid a scheduling conflict with President Obama’s Democratic National Convention address.
If these midweek games become a regular occurrence, then Florio’s hypothesis might gain even more credibility.
