Category: NFL News

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There are always some crazy quirks when it comes to the NFL schedule, and this year is no different. Although the league office does its best to make all 32 teams happy, the fact of the matter is that making everyone happy just isn’t possible when you’re putting together a schedule that consists of 272 games. 

Some teams will be happy about the quirks on their schedule while plenty of other teams won’t be. 

So who got the craziest quirks? That’s a great question. Let’s find out. 

Here are 22 of the weirdest quirks on the 2025 NFL schedule, starting with the Dallas Cowboys, who got hit with two quirks that the NFL has never seen before.

Cowboys hit with most brutal stretch ever. Someone in the NFL scheduling department must have wanted to see the Cowboys suffer this season, because they got handed a brutal stretch that will go on for SIX WEEKS. Starting in Week 12, the Cowboys will face the Eagles, Chiefs, Lions and Vikings in consecutive games, which will make Dallas the FIRST team in NFL history to play four straight games against teams that all won at least 14 games in the prior season. The Cowboys will also face the Chargers and Commanders in that stretch, so they’ll also become the first team in NFL history to play six straight games against teams that all won at least 11 games in the prior season. Basically, the Cowboys have a nightmare schedule.  Thirsty Thursday. It’s starting to seem like the NFL is trying to permanently move every Cowboys game to a Thursday. Dallas has a total of four Thursday games this year, which is the NFL record for most Thursday games in one season. The action starts in Week 1 against Philadelphia. After that, the Cowboys have a Thanksgiving game against the Chiefs, a Week 14…..

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RIVERDALE, Ga. — The Rivals Camp Series made its annual stop in Atlanta on Sunday and many top prospects put together impressive performances. Here is a breakdown of the MVPs from the event:

MORE FROM ATLANTA: Top performers from Saturday’s Rivals Combine Series event

CLASS OF 2025 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Team | Position | State

CLASS OF 2026 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Team | Position | State

CLASS OF 2027 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Team | Position | State

TRANSFER PORTAL: Full coverage | Player ranking | Team ranking | Transfer search | Transfer Tracker

QUARTERBACK: Jayce Johnson

Johnson captured MVP honors in a stacked field of passers from the Southeast competing in Atlanta. Johnson throws with torque and is extremely accurate — throwing short and intermediate passes and also attacking downfield. The four-star prospect layered throws and was able to balance his touch with his fastball, and was consistently placing the ball anywhere he wanted on the field Sunday.

RUNNING BACK: Andrew Beard

Beard upped his stock in a big way by earning MVP honors on Sunday. Beard was exceptional catching the football out of the backfield and was routing up opposing linebackers, who struggled to keep pace with speed and quick cuts. The four-star prospect is a three-down playmaker and proved as much in Sunday’s camp setting.

RECEIVER/TIGHT END: Kaiden Prothro

Prothro was nearly unguardable and won MVP in a highly-competitive field of pass-catchers. The four-star standout has elite hands and is a mismatch working outside the numbers and also in the middle of the field. We love his catch radius, his ability to play above the rim and the competitiveness to win on contested balls and dominate in the red zone.

OFFENSIVE LINE: Gabriel Osenda

Osenda saw reps on both the left and right tackle spots and was equally as dynamic in both spots. At 330 pounds, the Tennessee verbal played with excellent bend and feet, used leverage and finished at the end of reps. Osenda has made drastic leaps and bounds with his…

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The path has been laid forward by the NFL this week after unveiling the entire regular season schedule for 2025. While various nuggets about the schedule leaked out leading up to Wednesday’s release, it is still an avalanche of information that comes across the wire. With that in mind, it’s understandably hard to digest each and every facet of an 18-week schedule, but we’re here to help ensure you don’t miss out on some of the more notable contests on the docket. 

While there are going to be more than one game that’ll garner national attention in a given week, we’ve combed through each week’s slate and identified one contest in particular that stands out above the rest. Of course, because we’re looking for the top games each week, there will be a lot of teams rearing their heads multiple times, like the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs. That said, when the slate is a bit more muddled, we’ll try to bring other games to the forefront. 

Let’s dive into the games that you should have circled each week this season. 

Week 1: Dallas Cowboys at Philadelphia Eagles

Thursday, Sept. 4, 8:20 p.m. ET (NBC)

This one is pretty obvious. Sure, the opening Week 1 slate is loaded with high-profile games (like Baltimore vs. Buffalo on “Sunday Night Football”), but the opener has the juice. Philadelphia is set to unveil its latest Super Bowl championship banner and begin its title defense. First up to challenge them will be the Dallas Cowboys, who’ll be led by first-year head coach Brian Schottenheimer. Dak Prescott will also be making his return after last year’s season-ending injury and will have a new weapon in George Pickens, so there is no shortage of storylines here. 

Week 2: Philadelphia Eagles at Kansas City Chiefs

Sunday, Sept. 14, 4:25 p.m. ET (Fox)

We don’t have to wait long into the season to get a Super Bowl LIX rematch. After coming up just short of a three-peat and being shellacked in the…

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The NFL hopes to persuade the various owners to get behind the idea of allowing active players to participate in the 2028 Olympics flag football tournament in part by limiting participation to one player from each NFL team.

That will make for some interesting decisions regarding which players from each franchise will be the one to be permitted to play.

Presumably, more than one player per NFL team will want to do it. It could make for some interesting debates as to who gets to go.

Then there’s the question of who will pick the Olympics flag football team, and how the decisions will be made. Will the U.S. Olympic Committee pick the players? Will there be a qualification process? A competition?

Owners will want to minimize the occasions for players to get injured. They’ll want the team to be hand picked.

Then there’s the argument made last year by current U.S. flag football quarterback Darrell “Housh” Doucette that it’s “disrespectful” for NFL players to horn in on the flag turf and that Doucette would be a better pick than Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

If the owners pass the resolution allowing active players to play, it will be only the beginning of a process that will entail tough choices for the USOC — and heated conversations about which player from each team will be allowed to play. And whether the U.S. men’s flag football team members for the other three years and 50 weeks will be told to take a seat and allow NFL players to play a version of the sport that is very different from 11-on-11 tackle.

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San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy is about to become a very rich man. According to CBS Sports NFL Insider Jonathan Jones, Purdy and the Niners have agreed to terms on a five-year, $265 million contract extension. The deal includes $181 million in total guarantees and $165.05 million in the first three years, according to NFL Media. Per NBC Sports, $100 million is fully guaranteed at signing.

The $53 million average annual value on the deal ranks tied for seventh at the position, behind only Dak Prescott, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Jordan Love, Trevor Lawrence and Tua Tagovailoa. The reported $181 million in guarantees, if accurate, would rank eighth and the fully-guaranteed-at-signing number would rank 12th. The total value of $265 million is fifth behind Patrick Mahomes, Allen, Lawrence and Burrow.

Purdy, of course, was the last pick in the 2022 NFL Draft. He took a circuitous route to becoming San Francisco’s starter, with injuries to both Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo thrusting him into the lineup down the stretch of his rookie season. He performed at such a high level in his five-start audition and the playoffs that year that he was named the team’s full-time starter in 2023.

In his 36 career starts, Purdy has consistently put up elite passing efficiency numbers. He’s completed 67.5% of his passes at an average of 8.9 yards per attempt, with 64 touchdown passes and 27 interceptions. In 2023, he made the Pro Bowl and finished fourth in MVP voting while leading the league in yards per attempt, touchdown rate, quarterback rating and QBR. 

His numbers took a step backward in 2024 as the supporting cast atrophied around him, but he still averaged 8.5 yards per attempt (third-best in the league) and finished fifth in expected points added per dropback. Since he entered the league, he actually leads the NFL in EPA per dropback, according to Tru Media. He’s gone 23-13 as the…

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The Titans used the No. 1 overall pick on quarterback Cam Ward. Yet, the Titans are one of only three teams not to have a primetime game.

NFL Vice President of Broadcast Planning and Scheduling Mike North explained the league’s reasoning for shutting out the Titans.

“We kind of have this adage that you play your way into primetime,” North told Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports. “You don’t draft your way into primetime. So the Titans are one of the teams that don’t currently have a national television window assigned. But that’s what things like flexible scheduling are for. And if you look down the stretch for the Titans, they play San Francisco in Week 15, Kansas City in Week 16. They’ve got the same opportunity every other team has to play their way into a national window.”

That’s all well and good, but the past two No. 1 overall picks — Bryce Young with Carolina in 2023 and Caleb Williams with Chicago in 2024 — had multiple night games as rookies despite both their teams coming off 7-10 seasons.

The last No. 1 overall pick not to have a primetime game was edge rusher Myles Garrett with Cleveland in 2017.

The last quarterback drafted No. 1 overall not to have a primetime game as a rookie was Cam Newton with Carolina in 2011.

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Welcome to the Friday edition of the Pick Six newsletter! 

With the 2025 NFL schedule now out, there are no big events left until training camp, so you might be wondering what we’re going to be talking about in this newsletter for the next two months, and although I have no idea, it will be something, because the NFL news cycle never sleeps. 

That being said, the important thing is that I do know what we’ll be talking about today, and that’s the schedule. After breaking down the schedule yesterday, we’re going to break it down even more today by taking a look at the craziest quirks and tracking which teams will be traveling the most miles. 

As always, here’s your daily reminder to tell all your friends to sign up for the newsletter. To get them signed up, all you have to do is click here. Let’s get to the rundown. 

1. Caleb Williams didn’t want the Bears to draft him

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If Caleb Williams had gotten his way in the NFL Draft last year, he definitely wouldn’t have ended up in Chicago. That’s the main takeaway from “American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback,” a book by ESPN’s Seth Wickersham. ESPN revealed a few tidbits from the book on Thursday and there were some bombshells. 

Williams wanted the Vikings to draft him. After meeting with Kevin O’Connell at the 2024 NFL Combine, Williams decided that he absolutely wanted Minnesota to draft him. “I need to go to the Vikings,” he told his father. Williams’ dad, Carl, actually passed the request on to Bears general manager Ryan Poles, but Poles made it clear that the Bears would be drafting Caleb “no matter what.” The twist here is that the Bears will be opening their 2025 season against the Vikings in a Monday night showdown. I’m guessing Williams will be asked about this quite a few times…..

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The NFL says there is no glitch. Even if there’s still a glitch.

Earlier today, we pointed out that the official NFL.com schedule says that the two games announced for Saturday, December 20 (Eagles-Commanders and Packers-Bears) will actually be played on Friday, December 19. Each of the four teams’ websites apply neither a time nor a date to the games.

NFL.com has since changed its Week 16 slate. Instead of moving the games to Saturday, December 20, however, the schedule now has the two games under this heading: “Games Not Yet Scheduled.” With no date identified.

That said, the league says the games will be played on Saturday. And we’ll regard that as conclusive.

Still, the glitch lingers. It all makes us wonder whether, at some point, the league was considering moving a pair of traditional Saturday games to Friday, given the conflict with three college football playoff games.

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