Why the 2025 NFL Schedule Has Even More Big Brand Names in Prime Time

The NFL’s schedule makers explain why they felt there was an opportunity to push their big broadcast windows into the ratings stratosphere.

The NFC East’s stacked schedule rotation greatly affected how the NFL’s schedule makers tackled the task at hand. / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

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The NFL’s scheduling team came out of the 2024 season, took their first look at the ’25 schedule, and one thing stuck out—with the flagship NFC East playing a deep NFC North, and the NFC North matched with a similarly loaded AFC North, there was going to be a lot of inventory for their department to work with.

Opportunity, yes. Pressure, too.

“Right away, those combinations of divisions, we saw a bunch of strong, interesting matchups,” said NFL vice president of broadcasting Onnie Bose. “Now, how do we use them?”

Bose and the rest of his team—with Mike North, Max St John, Blake Jones, Lucy Popko, Matt Winston, Josh Helmrich, Hans Schroeder and, one final time, Howard Katz, alongside—went to commissioner Roger Goodell’s office Monday morning to present the final product. The time had come, as Bose puts it, “to put the pencils down” with a mountain of work done, and the final draft completed.

It started with 4,000 servers from Amazon Web Services putting hundreds of thousands of versions of the 272-game schedule through the filters. After that, over 7,000 got eyeballs on them, and hundreds got a closer look. This year, a total of 151 got the full deep-drive treatment, with Katz himself, in his 22nd and final season working on the schedule, personally inspecting each of those.

And maybe the best way to describe what came out of the process was how the very first of those 272 games reflected the self-imposed mandate that a strong slate gave the team.

That, of course, being the Philadelphia Eagles–Dallas Cowboys kickoff game, set for Sept. 4.

“Philly had a lot of good, interesting matchups, and we kicked around a lot of them,” Bose said. “Washington, a division rival in a rematch of the [conference] title game? The Eagles have the Lions at home. Denver has that feel of an up-and-coming team. Chicago, too. But starting last year with Baltimore and Kansas City, an AFC title game rematch, felt big. And as we looked through the schedule, we wanted to push ourselves—Let’s go big in the big windows.

“Any of a number of games would work in that window. But Dallas felt good, it felt right. It’ll be a charged environment, they’re raising the banner, a rival coming in.”

And so went the rest of the process led by Bose, North, Katz and Schroeder.

In short, rather than using big windows to amplify certain teams (that worked a couple of years ago with the league’s gamble to put an up-and-coming Lions team into the kickoff game), they made the conscious decision, with a deep schedule to work with, to use brand-name teams to try to push those big windows into the ratings stratosphere.

Time will tell if it makes a difference. For now, it gives a lot to chew on.

As the schedule was released Wednesday night, Bose, like he does every year, helped us with that on a bunch of things that jumped out to me on the work his team did.

2025 NFL Team-by-Team Schedules Including Dates and Times

The Chiefs were the only team to be scheduled the maximum of seven prime-time games. / Robert Deutsch-Imagn Images

• That the Kansas City Chiefs are the darlings of the schedule makers is no surprise. Andy Reid’s three-time world champions and reigning AFC kingpins maxed out with seven prime-time games and eight stand-alone games. Kansas City’s first 1 p.m. ET kickoff is in Week 7, and it only has two of those before December. All of that is, of course, earned.

Only one other team had six prime-time games. Yup, you guessed it, the Cowboys, who also matched Patrick Mahomes’s dynastic group with eight stand-alone games.

“Look, the Cowboys are always a draw, the fan base is there, the interest is there,” Bose said. “Yes, they were 7–10 last year, but they had 12–5 seasons the three previous years, Dak [Prescott] was hurt. Where will they be this year, 12–5 or 7–10? Well, they’re in one of the most competitive divisions, they have a track record, you have CeeDee Lamb, Micah Parsons. This wasn’t going to be the year the Cowboys were only going to get two prime-time games.”

It's fair, of course, to wonder if that year will ever come. And there’s good reason for that.

• The Pittsburgh Steelers landed four prime-time games—even with the uncertainty at quarterback. And Bose was more than willing to concede where that uncertainty presented a challenge for the scheduling team. Aaron Rodgers landing in Pittsburgh would, obviously, make the Steelers a much more attractive draw. But there’s no such guarantee that’ll happen.

I asked Bose if he’d ever dealt with anything like it, raising the end of Brett Favre’s career as perhaps the closest comparison for the situation at hand.

“That’s a great analogy,” Bose responded. “You and I have talked about it. We went through this when Peyton [Manning] was deciding. We went through it with [Tom] Brady, Rodgers the last couple years. There’s no hiding it, where he lands was going to affect what we’d do. The last two years, putting the New York Jets on Monday Night Football in Week 1 was a conscious decision. This was very different, because as of right now, the quarterback situation for the Steelers is Aaron Rodgers is not on the roster.”

Still, Pittsburgh’s strong schedule, and brand, allowed for the schedule makers to be relatively aggressive in getting the Steelers into big, national spots—with the acknowledgment that they’d have done more if he was definitively in.

“Look, based on our history, the answer to that is likely yes,” said Bose, when asked if this would look different if Rodgers was on Pittsburgh’s roster. “If he’s on the roster now, sure, that’s our job. Last year with the Jets, we put a lot of attention on those games. And if he was definitively on the roster, we’d have a different filter [for the Steelers] for sure.”

• The Chiefs’ schedule is interesting just in the sorts of places they show up—in Brazil for the opener, and then on both Thanksgiving and Christmas. The Lions and Cowboys are also playing on the two holidays, which, again, plays into the 2025 emphasis on putting big teams and big games into the biggest windows.

“Thanksgiving has our most viewed games, people are together, they’re watching before or after dinner,” said Bose. “So, again, thanks to the depth of the schedule we had, there was the opportunity to go big. And that Dallas game is usually our most viewed game of the year, so why not bring the two biggest brands, and get that much more attention on it? A lot of people are going to have that game on.”

That said, for Dallas, Detroit and Kansas City, some considerations did need to be made, for those teams to play on both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even if there won’t be as much budging now as there used to be.

“The one thing we didn’t do—no one is hosting games on both days,” Bose said. “The reality is, whether you’re willing to host Christmas or willing to host Thanksgiving, where we are as a league is that we play on these days. And a lot of teams have gotten savvy on it, and get the opportunity that’s there to play on those days and get that exposure on national television. There’s not too much to it, other than you do want to be sensitive to the fan bases and stadium workers, which I think we were in not having those teams home on both days.”

• Just to circle back on Rodgers for a second—Bose said that the Jets playing the Steelers in Week 1 actually isn’t about the potential for the quarterback to have to open the season at the Meadowlands. “That was a game we saw in a lot of different spots,” said Bose. “Someone joked with me today, saying that he admired our restraint that it’s not in prime-time in Week 1.”

The real driver, per Bose, was that the Steelers were a little pigeonholed. Pittsburgh Pirates home games block off Weeks 1 and 3, and the Steelers are going to Ireland in Week 4. So there were only so many options the league had with Pittsburgh early in the season.

The uncertainty surrounding Rodgers put the schedule makers in a tough spot regarding the Steelers, who are scheduled to play his former team in New York in Week 1. / Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

• There were other interesting blocks the league was working around, too.

Billy Joel’s rescheduled tour threw a wrench into a couple of dates in the fall. And maybe the more interesting story was how the Los Angeles Chargers and Las Vegas Raiders worked together on Week 2. Jim Harbaugh’s group will be returning from Brazil and, after that, the league wanted to have them at home. The problem was that SoFi Stadium had a block that weekend because of a Chris Brown concert. Allegiant Stadium in Vegas had a block, too.

But rather than throw their hands up and go back to the drawing board, the Chargers went to work with their division rivals, who agreed to work around the stadium commitment to make sure the teams could play on the second Monday night of the season in Vegas. Which allows for the Chargers, without the shot to play at home, to have a short trip after a much, much longer one.

• The Minnesota Vikings are also creating a new precedent in playing the Steelers in Dublin in Week 4, then the Cleveland Browns in London in Week 5—becoming the first team to play internationally in two different countries in consecutive weeks. That one took buy-in from Minnesota.

The idea initially came as a result of the larger international slate the league was working off of, with the Steelers, Browns, Jets, Chargers, Indianapolis Colts, Miami Dolphins and Jacksonville Jaguars designated as teams giving up a home game to go overseas.

“It was one of those things—we just noticed [the Vikings] were a common opponent to Cleveland and Pittsburgh,” said Bose. “It is the first time like it. Jacksonville’s had back-to-back games, but both were in London, one was a road game, one was home. This is the first time a team is staying as the visiting team, and playing in two countries. We saw the opportunity and discussed it with them. This is not something we’d do to a team that wasn’t open to it. But they were open to it, and we’ll see what we can learn from it.”

• Another example of the big-games-in-big-windows dynamic will come in Week 16, with the Fox Saturday doubleheader of Packers-Bears and Eagles-Commanders on the weekend of Dec. 20. Those two have a chance to have massive implications. They’re also being played on the same day as a first-round College Football Playoff tripleheader.

And while the NFL didn’t exactly bend over backward for college football (and I think they should be doing more, for sure), Bose did show a willingness to work with them.

“We’re aware of it,” Bose said. “We played a lot of games together over that weekend last year. And our position has been that the NFL has played over that weekend, the third weekend of December, in 37 of the last 40 years.. And as we’ve talked about the schedule evolving, it was important for us to continue that. But we always want to work together with them. There will always be ways to do it.”

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Katz speaks after receiving the McCann Award during the 2022 Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinees Gold Jacket dinner. / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

With this year’s slate nearing completion, there was a sense of nostalgia among the schedule makers. At the March owners meeting, Goodell spoke about Katz in front of the league’s general session, with the hundreds in attendance giving Katz a standing ovation afterward. Network execs, on Thursday, paid respects to Katz, one-by-one, as the schedule makers gave them their slates. Bose & Co. will have a farewell dinner for Katz soon.

The reality is, the job that was done over the past four months takes a lot of folks doing a lot of different things. North and St John, for example, are running the software. Bose is seeing things through the eyes of the networks. But none of it is there if not for Katz’s vision, which has been the bellwether for the schedule for more than 20 years—starting with Steve Bornstein bringing him over after the former network exec spent a year at NFL Films.

“Howard came in a little before me, but not too far into the era of getting away from the peg board and being happy to solve one schedule, and we’re using six computers in a room to solve this,” said Bose. “He really shifted our mindset of, Let’s be happy to get a schedule done and not have 20 three-game road trips, where we’re lucky to get some Monday Night Football games. He brought this experience of a television executive, and that focus of, Let’s get the prime-time games right, let’s make sure it’s equitable for the teams, but let’s get the prime-time games right. And then over time, let’s make sure that the 1 o’clock windows are as strong as they can be, and make sure we always have a good, strong game and diversity of geography.

“He really pushed us and challenged us. We always talk about how scheduling is art and science. The science is computers—Mike North is the scientist, he is the guy who is the mad scientist, he makes those computers sing. But he always says, the computers can only do what the humans tell them, and the humans for so many years were driven by Howard. And he had his yellow legal pad and he was sketching out his vision of what the schedule can and should be. And our job really was, How do we teach the computers to execute and think like Howard does, and replicate that yellow legal pad? He really pushed that evolution.

“And this was the time, Sunday Night Football on NBC was new, and a half-season of Thursday Night Football, and how do we get the best games into those windows? And you really saw the viewership from 2006, we peaked in 2015, of just the impact of just being that much smarter about getting the games in those windows. And then we could never have gotten to a world of a full season of games on Amazon on Thursday, and games on Netflix, and a game on YouTube, and the partners wanting to be a part of it, multiple games internationally, if we didn’t have that foundation from Howard, that thinking.

“Mike and I have done this for many years with him, and we’ve got new teammates as part of it. But his mold and imprint and DNA, every time we look at a schedule, we think about that. We may not have our No. 2 pencil and scratch our notes in the margins the way he does, but we’re all a product of what he taught us, and how he’d do it—the right way to do it.”

And that way, most certainly, was on display all over that loaded schedule all of you devoured Wednesday night.

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