The 2025 NFL Schedule is Here — My Way! Just Like the Golden Age of ABC MNF, ESPN SNF, and 16 Games

Here we go again! Backed by popular demand (well, my own personal demand, anyway), here is my latest installment in my now-yearly pet project.

There are so many complications, and yet that’s what makes this schedule beautiful, just as it was between 2002-2005. For those who forget, that was the four-year period when the league had 32 teams and still lived on the old TV deal. The structure was simple: CBS housed all games with AFC road teams, Fox had all games with NFC road teams, ESPN hosted Sunday Night Football, and ABC was home to Monday Night Football.

Frankly, that was when the schedule was at its absolute best.

These days, it almost feels like anyone could make this schedule. No longer do the schedule-makers have to worry about not putting the Raiders and 49ers in the same time slot, nor do they care anymore about keeping the Giants and Jets in different slots. They don’t really seem to care about travel, three-game road-trips, or overloading a team’s prime-time schedule. This schedule is the most solid proof we’ve ever seen that it really is all about money in the NFL (not that it wasn’t before, but it wasn’t as blatant through the schedule). Oh yeah, and for no reason (other than money, obviously) they play 17 games instead of 16.

So I always long to dream, and hence this yearly version of the schedule. Here are the main complications in making this schedule, rules I did my very best not to break, and core beliefs on display:

Monday Night Football needs to be the premier event

What is the point of having Monday Night Football if it isn’t the headline game of the week? Why have an extra day of football for a game that plays second-fiddle to the one the night before? This was one of the more heartbreaking changes that occurred as part of the new TV deal that began in 2006, when Roger Goodell took over as commissioner for Paul Tagliabue. In this version, MNF is No. 1.

All games will be played in the USA

No, this is not some sort of patriotic statement. I love that the league wants to go global, but one London game is too much, let alone four! The league tinkered with a game in Mexico City in 2005, the only non-US game between 2002-2005, but the travel and timing has thrown the schedule out of whack. Not to mention, who wants to wake up at 9:30 AM local time to watch their team play (6:30 AM if you’re on the West Coat!), or lose a home game off the schedule? There are only eight of these a year; this isn’t baseball.

Thursday football is for Thanksgiving (and the opener)

Again, let’s keep things simple. Thursday football is a scheduling nightmare, and player safety is put at risk. The opening Thursday night game makes sense because no team is playing on a “short week.” Thanksgiving football is the most pure thing about the NFL, so it stays. But only the Lions and Cowboys should carry on this tradition. A Thursday night game on Thanksgiving is overkill. 12:35 and 4:05 are the traditional kickoff times for those games, something that will change this coming season when it goes back to the Sunday kickoff times of 1 and 4:30 p.m.

Week 17 is unrestricted

This is, without a doubt, the worst part of the schedule for me. I don’t even quite know why, but I’m starting to figure it out.

First off, it’s stale. With the unveiling of the schedule back in the day, I always looked at Week 17 first. I wanted to know the unpredictable matchups on the docket that would finish off the year. Some of the best Week 17’s of all time happened because of non-divisional matchups, and it stinks to already basically know who is going to play whom in Week 17. Additionally, with the final week by nature being likely to produce a handful of meaningless games, why schedule a juicy divisional matchup like Ravens-Steelers that could be rendered useless? The whole division-only thing takes away a lot of the fun of the schedule being unveiled.

Having Week 17 be all divisional games almost makes it feel like a different season, like the schedule-makers block off this week because of this silly rule. It also can potentially render Week 16 — yes, Week 16! — games meaningless, and in 2021 and 2022 combined only one division title has actually been decided in a head-to-head matchup.

In theory it made sense what the league wanted to do, but rumor has it that this was actually born out of frustration that the Colts did not go for the perfect season in 2009, choosing to rest their players and prompting the change for 2010.

Don’t flex those muscles

Likely the part of my schedule most vulnerable to criticism, and I understand why, is choosing not to go with the flex scheduling that entered our lives in 2006. It has probably made things better, and yet the league managed to survive all the way through 2005 by setting a matchup and sticking with it. This is a schedule, which means it’s set and structured and not meant to be changed. I understand doing away with the final Monday night game so as not to risk anyone playing a playoff game on a short week (as was the case the last time it happened, with the 2002 49ers), but even just leaving the Sunday night game in place is fine with me. Of course, now that the league stuffs a MNF wild card game onto the schedule, someone plays in the divisional round on a short week anyway. Wow, way to fall back to hypocrisy, NFL.

Also, I refuse to acknowledge the existence of “cross-flexing.” Plain and simple, if the AFC team is the road team, the game is on CBS. If the NFC team is the road team, the game is on Fox.

One thing that the league did have from 2002-2005 was CBS/Fox time flexing, with some scheduling adjustments being made on several occasions. So I should have specified the non-flexing was for primetime only.

Time and geography

The hardest part of the schedule usually boils down to balancing the Giants and Jets, and now the Rams and Chargers (since the Raiders and 49ers no longer share the Bay Area, their games never clash). There is also the MLB schedule that is in play for September, as about eight teams prefer not to have the two teams in the city play at the same time. I honored this as well as the days when the NFL had the courtesy not to schedule a Sunday night game up against the first Sunday of the World Series.

Since the Giants and Jets share a stadium, and now so do the Rams and Bolts, they of course cannot be home on the same day. They also cannot play in the same time slot or the same TV network (the exception to the latter being if they play on different days). That used to be true for the 49ers and Raiders, even though they did not share a stadium.

Oh, and by the way, you’ll notice I stuck with the 4:15 p.m. time slot for the nationally televised games, not the silly 4:25 p.m. slot that the league implemented to take up the airwaves for a little longer.

Balanced byes

They would keep the bye weeks rather simple, having them between Weeks 3 and 10, with four teams off per week. Nowadays they are all over the place. Granted, Week 3 is a little early, but this was the system, and it worked just fine and I decided to stick with it.

The Pro Bowl is back in Hawaii after the season!

The way it should be. Really nothing more to say there. Go back and watch highlights from some old Pro Bowls, and you’ll realize it wasn’t always this pitiful display we have now (on the mainland, no less). This all started to go downhill when the league experimented in moving the game to Miami in 2009 (and I can say that with certainty because I was there). Now, the game is completely gone and replaced by a poor man’s version of the Skills Challenge, which was a great mid-week watch to kick back and relax leading up to the game itself.

I refuse to watch NFL players playing dodgeball on an obstacle course in Orlando over a game in Honolulu.

Saturday Night Fever

Good on the NFL for bringing back Saturday football, at least. The way it used to be was that the league would usually have two weeks (either 15 and 16, or 16 and 17) with Saturday games, with 2005 being an exception because all bulk of the Week 16 games were played on Saturday because Christmas was Sunday. There is a game in a 1:30 p.m. slot, a 5 p.m. slot, and sometimes a primetime game at night. If the 5 p.m. game is a Fox game, the Sunday national games would be on CBS, and vice versa. The 2025 season mirrors the same calendar as the 2003 campaign, so Weeks 16 and 17 got the Saturday tripleheaders.

The networks

As there would be 35 primetime games (as opposed to the outrageous, oversaturated 50+ they have now), one network would have to lose an additional game to primetime. To even things out, that network would get one extra “doubleheader” (the nationally televised 4:15 p.m. game of the week). The league would alternate each year, as you would expect.

Again, I mirrored the 2003 lineup of doubleheaders, with that season being the only one of the four to feature any network receiving three straight doubleheaders at any point (Weeks 12-14).

Occasionally, CBS or Fox would only have three games instead of at least four in its early window. This never happened more than five times total in a season, and no network even had it happen more than two times more than the other (for example, at most, CBS might have it happen three times and Fox twice). Today is more challenging because the Rams played in St. Louis then and now play on the West Coast, so it’s unfair to hold it to that exact standard, but I managed to do it anyway.

There is also an oddity that played out every season from 2002-2005 that I kept. Only Fox had late games in Week 1 (CBS had the US Open), and only CBS had late games in Week 6 (this was because Fox prioritized its postseason MLB coverage). In 2005, a couple of times there was only one 4:15 p.m. game, but I kept each week with two or more.

Miscellaneous

I really tried to limit three-game homestands and roadtrips, as usually you wouldn’t see more than five of the former or three of the latter in a season. For this one, I went with three home and two road for the year.

As for the primetime games, what the league used to do was be cognizant of altering home and road games, not repeating matchups if they’re division rivals, and balancing divisional and non-divisional games. No team gets more than three Monday night games nor will they get more than four primetime games overall. It was important — and challenging — to even those out and make sure every top team appeared on SNF at least once. Sometimes (like the 2004 Seahawks) a team would actually get a MNF game but not a Sunday nighter. Back in the day, you usually would have anywhere from four to six teams that got snubbed for primetime games; I ended up with just three. Teams should not appear on the same primetime network more than once in a three-week span, although it’s not uncommon to have a team play a Sunday night game and Monday night game back-to-back, or vice versa.

Divisional games are tricky. I went with seven in Week 17; the average from 2002-2005 was almost exactly half (eight). There was one team each season that played all its division home games before any division road games, and one team that did the opposite.

It is very rare for a team to play four straight division games, although it happened in 2002 with the Panthers (five straight) and 2003 Saints (four straight). I was able to avoid that happening in mine.

Only once (2003) did two rivals play twice within three weeks. It is also unusual – but definitely not unprecedented – for two rivals to play both matchups before other rivals play their first one.

Of course, prime time games are even trickier. There are several rules the league did well not to break (although 2005 was an oddity with one teams playing its first two games on a network at home, and another with three). Usually a team didn’t play an intraconference or interconference home and road game against teams from the same division. The only one I could find was the 2002 Dolphins, who played at Green Bay and home to Chicago on ABC. I fell into this trap twice, as the Broncos play two AFC South teams on Sunday Night Football in my version, one home and one road, and same for the Bills with the NFC South on Monday Night Football.

The league never had more than three teams start the season with two straight home or road games, nor did it ever have more than five to close the season. I kept it at two and two, respectively.

Cleveland and Washington always opened the season at home, so I kept that tradition.

Below is the full version of the schedule, and beneath that are each team’s individual schedules.