Because it’s a year with a zero in it, the Dallas Cowboys are going to be all but inescapable during the 2025 NFL season. But while Jerry Jones’ team always manages to earn its keep in their multiple national TV windows, this year will find Dallas sharing the spotlight with the Detroit Lions and Kansas City Chiefs.
Dan Campbell’s patella-gnawing squad bested the Cowboys last season by averaging 22.7 million viewers across 10 national slots, and the NFL has wisely elected to keep the Lions in front of the cameras in 2025. Detroit will match Dallas with 12 national windows, the fourth of which will see the team traveling to Kansas City to take on Patrick Mahomes’ Chiefs on NBC’s Sunday Night Football. KC is slated to suit up for—you guessed it—12 nationally distributed games, a level of exposure that’s in keeping with a franchise that has powered its way to five of the last six Super Bowls.
While the Chiefs have probably already circled their Week 2 revenge game against the Eagles on Fox, arguably the most in-demand outing on their schedule is a Week 9 scrap with the Buffalo Bills. It’s always a recipe for fireworks when these two teams get together, and this particular pairing has been CBS’ top request from the league for the last several years. The Bills’ 30-21 victory over the Chiefs last November was the NFL’s biggest non-Thanksgiving game, averaging 31.1 million viewers on the Tiffany network.
The Chiefs closed out the season with an average delivery of 22.1 million viewers, ranking third behind the Lions and Cowboys (22.5 million).
Another team that’ll be getting the star treatment is Washington, as the Commanders were the surprise attraction of the NFC. The Commanders are scheduled to appear in 10 national outings this season, up from four in 2024 and three the previous year.
“Every year there’s always incredible surprises,” Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive VP of media distribution said during a press huddle Wednesday. “You know, the Commanders were one last year, the Lions were one a couple years ago. Our flexibility allows those teams to play … into bigger windows, which we’re incredibly excited about.”
Given the show Washington quarterback Jayden Daniels put on in his rookie season, the Commanders are unlikely to make the league’s media partners regret their unabashed enthusiasm for Josh Harris’ feel-good team. But that’s not to say that the networks have never been burned by a show of unanimous, unbridled enthusiasm. In 2019, when everyone was hot on Baker Mayfield and the Cleveland Browns, the long-suffering AFC North franchise spit the bit. After years of remanding the Browns to a single national appearance per season, the rights holders locked Cleveland into seven big windows, four of which aired in primetime. (Prior to that show of irrational exuberance, the Brownies hadn’t been featured in a night game since 2008.) Mayfield & Co. didn’t live up to the hype and were subsequently busted back down to just two national windows the following year.
More recently, the hubbub around Aaron Rodgers’ transfer to New York made the Jets one of the most coveted properties of the 2023 campaign, as the TV and streaming outlets lined up to carry nine national Gang Green games. The Ayahuasca King memorably managed just four snaps before blowing out his Achilles tendon in the Monday Night Football opener, whereupon buyers’ remorse set in. These things happen, which is why the NFL has expanded the scope of its flex scheduling. (It’s also why Madison Avenue invented make-goods.)
If it’s little wonder why the NFL has secured the max number of high-profile gigs for Dallas, KC and Detroit, a handful of other teams may as well have joined the witness protection program. The Giants and Jets are each limited to three national appearances, down from a combined nine dates last season. In other words, the nation’s largest media market—New York boasts 7.49 million TV households, or 6% of the total U.S. base—will be largely underrepresented as the NFL celebrates its 106th season. After eking out a joint winning percentage of .235 in 2024, the attempt to brush both MetLife Stadium tenants under the rug shouldn’t raise any eyebrows.
Also getting the cold shoulder from the gang at 345 Park Avenue are the NFL’s sad sack tier, which includes the Titans, Cardinals, Panthers, Browns and Jaguars. While you won’t see much of these teams in the big-money windows, at least one perennially put-upon club will enjoy a bit of a lift in 2025. A year after appearing in all of zero national games, Arizona will pop up in a pair of primetime outings, including a Week 9 Monday Night Football visit with Dallas.
One team that is almost always in demand is the Steelers, but even with their long track record, Pittsburgh’s haul of seven national windows may prove to be a bit too generous. NFL officials presumably are under the impression that the Rooneys will sign Rodgers to a one-year deal, because otherwise they’ve slated Mason Rudolph in more high-traffic time slots than would seem entirely rational. (Another indication that the league thinks Rodgers will be sporting the single-decal helmet come the fall is that Pittsburgh is not only set to open the season on the road against the Jets, but will host the Packers in a Week 8 date on NBC.)
However things shake out at the confluence of the three rivers, the NFL is clearly pulling out all the stops to ensure its continued stranglehold over the sports-media landscape. After last year’s double whammy of an Olympics and a presidential election, the league would very much like to return to the glory days of 2023, when it accounted for 93 of the top 100 U.S. broadcasts. While last year’s deliveries dipped just 2% in the face of all that disruption, the NFL is taking no chances now that it has nothing but open field ahead of it.
As such, the league has gone sicko mode with its already over-the-top Thanksgiving Day slate, pitting the Packers against the Lions in the early game on Fox, while teeing up a sure ratings lollapalooza with Chiefs-Cowboys in CBS’s late-afternoon window. Two years ago, CBS set an all-time regular-season high when 41.8 million viewers feasted on the Washington-Dallas brawl.
Given this year’s matchup and Nielsen’s recent expansion of its out-of-home ratings panel, that record no longer seems safe.
With assistance from Jacob Feldman.
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