Battle of the scorebugs: NFL Twitter picks a clear winner in Week 1

After Thursday and Friday whet our appetites for the return of the NFL, we finally got the full meal on Sunday, as a full slate of Week 1 action kicked off across the league at 1 p.m. ET. New faces in new places, rookies making their highly anticipated debuts, Aaron Rodgers looking for revenge against his former team — this early batch of games had it all.

But while most fans tuned in excited to watch what would happen on the field, what was happening on their television screens earned some initial attention. As they do seemingly every year now, both FOX and CBS debuted new scorebugs on Sunday. Below is what CBS had to offer — not necessarily flashy, but also not a huge departure from what we've seen before. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel here.

FOX, meanwhile ... well, let's just say they didn't try to reinvent the wheel so much as get rid of the wheel entirely.

Seriously, where did it go? Why do the zeroes here look like the Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro? Did the graphics people just get halfway through and then get distracted? Why is the down and distance so small relative to everything else?

If you also found yourself asking these questions, take solace in the fact that you most certainly were not alone. NFL fans around the internet quickly made their voices heard, and the result of this network battle was clear.

NFL fans make their feelings heard loud and clear as FOX loses the 2025 scorebug war

Maybe some fan, somewhere felt differently, but I couldn't find them (or at the very least, they weren't willing to make their objectively incorrect opinion available for public consumption). The CBS scorebug didn't blow anyone away, but then again, that's not what we need from a literal scorebug. Just tell us the score and all other pertinent information! Maybe that's what FOX was going for, a sort of hyper-minimalistic thing, but they wound up overcorrecting and becoming a distraction all the same.

Unfortunately, we're more than likely stuck with this look for the remainder of the season at the very least; FOX first unveiled it back during February's Super Bowl, and if the backlash then wasn't enough to sway them over the offseason, they must be pretty committed. To fans of all NFC teams, you have our most heartfelt apologies. If it's any consolation, this year's Big Game is on NBC.