Detroit Lions Listed as Best Game of the Week Early in 2026 NFL Season

The Detroit Lions will travel on the road early in the season for a marquee matchup against the Buffalo Bills.

In Week 2, Dan Campbell's squad will be the opponent when the AFC East squad opens up their brand new stadium for the first time.

Sports Illustrated recently listed the best game of every week throughout the entire 2026 NFL season.

Detroit's second game of the season was listed as the best contest for that week.

As writer Mike Kadlick explained, "The Bills will christen their brand new Highmark Stadium in Week 2 when they welcome the Lions to Orchard Park, N.Y., for a marquee, cross-conference matchup onThursday Night Football."

Honorable mentions that week also included the Bengals against the Texans, the Vikings squaring off against the Bears and the Jaguars meeting the Broncos.

Broadcaster Al Michaels recently appeared on the "Sports Media with Richard Deitsch" podcast. He expressed the league has been more and more favorable to granting better, higher-profile matchups on Amazon on a weekly basis.

“The league’s been very, very good to us as the years have progressed here,” Michaels explained. “I mean, the first year, getting started, the games weren’t particularly compelling. But the schedule now has gotten better and better and better.”

Michaels noted the league is viewing Amazon as a legitimate broadcast partner, as evidenced by higher quality games, even in the postseason, being aired on Amazon Prime.

“There was a seminal moment last year in terms of how the league felt about Prime, when there were six Wild Card games at the end of the season, and they didn’t apportion them until the final whistle on Sunday,” Michaels said. “Our whole group gathered, and we said, you know what, they’ll probably give us the third or fourth best game. We knew the best game, number one, Green Bay-Chicago, we weren’t going to get it. San Francisco-Philadelphia, doubtful.

"So. we would probably wind up with the, I think Jacksonville played Buffalo, the Rams were playing Carolina. I can’t remember what the other game was, but we were stunned when they gave us Green Bay-Chicago."

The playoff game secured an audience of 32 million viewers.

Michaels shared, “I think I kidded (Fox Sports Chief Executive Offer) Eric Shanks about it, too. I said, ‘You guys were stunned over at Fox.’ He said, ‘We were.’ I said, ‘You can’t do every Green Bay-Chicago game, you know.’ And then we did 32 million people in the game, it was phenomenal.”

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