The NFL on Monday revealed three of the season’s biggest games, headlined by the Bills’ first regular-season visit to their new stadium against the Lions on Sept. 17 and the Cowboys’ trip to the Giants in the opening NBC Sunday Night Football game on Sept. 13. The Cowboys will also host the Eagles on Fox on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26.
Those three matchups were announced as NBC, Fox and Prime Video made their upfront presentations to advertisers, while the league said the full schedule will be released on Thursday. The Bills-Lions game will open Amazon’s Thursday Night Football schedule, giving the new Buffalo stadium its first regular-season showcase in prime time.
For Dallas, the early reveal accounts for three of its 17 games and keeps the NFC East in the league’s spotlight. It is the eighth time in the past 15 years that the Cowboys and Giants will open the season against each other, and the 15th time the rivals will meet on NBC’s Sunday night package. Dallas also got a Thanksgiving date with Philadelphia, a matchup that will be only the third time overall and first since 2014 that the Eagles have been the Cowboys’ holiday opponent.
The timing matters because the NFL has traditionally used Week 2 to show off new stadiums in a primetime slot, but Buffalo is getting that spotlight a week earlier. The league also had already announced a couple of weeks ago that Dallas will play the Ravens in Rio de Janeiro on Sept. 27 in a Week 3 game on CBS, leaving the Cowboys with a schedule that already reaches from New York to Brazil to Thanksgiving before the full slate is even public.
That leaves one more opening-night question unresolved: the Seahawks, defending champions, will raise their Super Bowl banner and start the season at home on Sept. 9, but their opponent is still to be determined among Chicago, Arizona, Kansas City, the Chargers or a title-game rematch against New England. By Thursday, the rest of the schedule will fill in around those headline games, but Monday’s announcement already confirmed that some of the league’s biggest draws will land where the networks want them most.
