Plainfield High School (New Jersey) announces 2025 football schedule

The big news surrounding Plainfield’s upcoming schedule is that the annual Thanksgiving Day game vs. Westfield, a rivalry that was the state’s third-longest Turkey Day matchup, dating back to 1899 during the William McKinley Administration, will be played as the season opener for both teams on August 28 in Plainfield.

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Football schedules for the 2025 season are starting to be announced all across the Garden State and High School On SI New Jersey will share these as we see them.

Plainfield High School, under the direction of first-year head coach Donald Jones, a Plainfield alumnus and former wide receiver with the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and the New England Patriots, has announced its 2025 schedule.

The big news surrounding Plainfield’s upcoming schedule is that the annual Thanksgiving Day game vs. Westfield, a rivalry that was the state’s third-longest Turkey Day matchup, dating back to 1899 during the William McKinley Administration, will be played as the season opener in 2025 for both teams on August 28 in Plainfield.

The reason for switching the traditional Thanksgiving Day game vs. Plainfield to the season opener has to do with the ever-expanding NJSIAA state playoffs. The New Jersey high school football playoffs in 2025 will begin on November 7 or 8, for the first round, with the state finals potentially being played at MetLife Stadium or Rutgers University between November 28 and December 3, according to the NJSIAA. This year, Thanksgiving Day will fall on November 27.

“They’ve extended the state playoffs so long that it became a safety concern,” said Westfield High School Director of Athletics James DeSarno. “This was a mutual decision between Plainfield High School and ourselves and one that was made in the interest of safety.”

Westfield leads the all-time series 66-46-7 but the Cardinals snapped the Blue Devils’ 13-game winning streak in the series last season, claiming its first win since 2011 with a hard-fought 14-9 defensive battle on a rain-soaked field in Westfield.

This year’s season-opening tilt vs. Westfield is the first of three straight home games at the historic Hub Stein Sports Complex Stadium, as the Cardinals will then host New Brunswick on September 5 and Woodbridge on September 12. Plainfield’s first road test comes on September 19 at Perth Amboy, followed by another road game the following week at the Haverford School in Pennsylvania on September 27.

After that it’s home tests vs. Franklin (October 3) and Colonia (October 10), before closing out the regular season with road games vs. Somerville (October 17) and Linden (October 25).

Jones played collegiately at Lackawanna, then Youngstown State before being signed as an undrafted free agent by Buffalo in 2010. For the last three years, he’s been the wide receivers coach at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in nearby Edison, which hasn’t lost a Big Central Conference football game since November of 2020, a 31-game streak.

The first-year Plainfield mentor takes over a program that went 6-4 a year ago which included a second straight appearance in the NJSIAA Playoffs where the Cards dropped an 18-12 decision to Passaic Tech in a North Jersey, Section 2, Group 5 quarterfinal round game.

2025 Plainfield football schedule

8/28 vs. Westfield 6pm

9/5 vs. New Brunswick 6pm

9/12 vs Woodbridge 6pm

9/19 at Perth Amboy 6:00pm

9/27 at The Haverford School 1:00pm

10/3 vs. Franklin 6:00pm

10/10 vs. Colonia 6:00pm 

10/17 at Somerville 6:00pm 

10/25 at Linden 1:00pm

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