The NFL's Thanksgiving tradition has been long established and sees many Americans locked in on football on Turkey Day, especially in the afternoon when Detroit and Dallas host games. While the league has shied away from scheduling marquee matchups in recent years since most people will have the game on anyway, that has certainly changed for the 2025 season, as you can see below.
Thanksgiving & Football š¦š @CaesarsSports pic.twitter.com/MYgmc1dBRd
ā NFL (@NFL) May 15, 2025
The rotation of afternoon games means that the Detroit game will be on FOX while CBS gets the Cowboys at 4:30 p.m. ET. The night game on NBC has rotating since 2012 and its home team will snap one of the longest Thanksgiving appearance droughts in the history of the league.
2025 NFL Thanksgiving Day schedule breakdown
Thanksgiving kicks off with a divisional showdown in Detroit as the Lions welcome the Green Bay Packers to Ford Field with a new 1:00 p.m. ET kickoff time, the first time that the Thanksgiving game kicks off later than 12:30 p.m. ET. This game marks the 23rd time that Green Bay and Detroit face off on Thanksgiving, an NFL record for the most frequent matchup on the holiday.
The big shocker came on Wednesday morning, when CBS announced that they will see the Kansas City Chiefs head to Dallas to take on the Cowboys in Patrick Mahomes' first-ever visit to AT&T Stadium. This game likely would have been ticketed for a featured doubleheader window in past schedules, but the NFL clearly wanted to get Patrick Mahomes playing on Thanksgiving for the first time in his career.
The selection also snaps a nearly 20-year Thanksgiving drought for the Chiefs, who haven't played on Turkey Day since they hosted the Denver Broncos in 2006 to mark the relaunch of Thursday Night Football, which was then on the NFL Network. Kansas City and Dallas haven't played on Thanksgiving since 1996.
NBC will round out Thanksgiving with a good old fashioned AFC North rivalry as the Baltimore Ravens play host to the Cincinnati Bengals in a battle of top quarterbacks between Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow. The Ravens are back on Thanksgiving for the first time since 2013 while Cincinnati is making its first Turkey Day appearance in 15 years.