No league does a better job of keeping its sport in the spotlight year-round than the NFL. The Super Bowl focus quickly shifts to the NFL Combine, which relinquishes the spotlight to free agency before interest funnels into the draft.
The schedule for the regular season will be released this week. At this point, it’s become a mini-holiday.
The Green Bay Packers should be in prime time on a handful of occasions. Let’s take a look at what games could be in the standalone spot.
One of the Bears games will be in primetime
Last year marked the second consecutive season in which the Packers and Chicago Bears didn’t have a prime-time matchup. Before that, the two played one of their tilts in prime time for 17 consecutive seasons, almost all of which occurred in Lambeau.
Chicago’s fanbase once again awarded the team the offseason championship belt. However, this time it feels a little different.
The Bears hired Ben Johnson, who was perhaps 2025’s most coveted coaching candidate. Johnson comes over after taking the Detroit Lions’ offense to new levels as their offensive coordinator.
There will be a lot of hype around the Bears this year. As a result, it’s easy to expect the Packers and Bears to have a prime-time matchup. The curveball we will throw here is predicting the game will be in Chicago, not Green Bay.
Green Bay had four games in a row that landed in prime time in 2024. It started with a Thanksgiving night game at Lambeau Field against the Miami Dolphins and concluded with a 34-0 win over the New Orleans Saints on Monday Night Football. Between those two were a Thursday Night Football contest at Detroit and a Sunday Night Football tilt in Seattle.
Right around that four- to five-game mark seems appropriate again for the Packers regarding the number of times they’ll play on a national stage during the regular season.
The league will also want Rodgers vs. the Packers on national TV
Just as obvious as a Packers-Bears matchup getting that honor is the Packers-Steelers game this year.
All of this is contingent on Aaron Rodgers signing with the Pittsburgh Steelers. It seems that will eventually be the case; at least the Steelers believe so.
If Rodgers inks a deal with the Steelers, putting the game against Green Bay on prime time is the easiest decision the NFL could make in working out their schedule.
There is a slight risk that the schedule is likely all but cemented in at this point, and Rodgers still hasn’t made an official decision. Even if Rodgers pulls a rabbit out of the hat and decides to hang up the cleats at this point, the allure of two historic franchises squaring off in a standalone spot is convincing enough.
When the schedule comes out on Wednesday, it’d be stunning to see Packers-Steelers as a noon kickoff on CBS or FOX.
Love vs. Jayden Daniels feels like a primetime matchup
Jayden Daniels took the league by storm last year as a rookie and helped catapult the Washington Commanders to the NFC Championship against the Philadelphia Eagles.
The Commanders don’t look like a team holding back in 2025. They should be right in the playoff mix again.
Washington will travel to Green Bay this season. Considering the many options for Green Bay’s home slate that could end up in prime time, the Commanders matchup is impossible to ignore.
The NFL will want to spotlight Daniels and the Commanders numerous times in 2025, and rightfully so.
What better way to display them than in a road game at Lambeau Field under the lights?
Lamar Jackson in Green Bay should be a prime-time game
Green Bay’s home games are littered with prime-time potential. Narrowing it down to the most likely choices, only to see the league put the Carolina Panthers matchup with the Packers on a Monday night like last year with the New Orleans Saints contest, makes it even trickier.
Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals and Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens make trips to Green Bay in 2025.
Jackson led the Ravens to another postseason berth in 2024 before coming up short in Buffalo. Burrow and the Bengals had a surprisingly down year but should rebound in 2025.
With the electric Jackson showing no signs of slowing down, the Packers-Ravens placed in a prime-time slot feels right. Baltimore and Green Bay have been models of consistency in recent years that have come up just short of getting over that postseason hump in the last couple of seasons.
What should the fifth primetime game be?
That’s four games; for a fifth, let’s just list a string of possibilities.
Green Bay hosting Cincinnati checks many boxes for getting a prime-time slot. So does either matchup against Detroit, as the Packers and Lions should be in contention for the NFC North in 2025.
The Packers started 2024 in prime time against Philadelphia in Brazil and ended the season falling to the Eagles in the postseason. Jalen Hurts and Co. coming to town in 2025 is an obvious matchup to spotlight.
For other road matchups that fit the ball, the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay getting a Sunday or Monday night billing wouldn’t be shocking in the slightest. The Denver Broncos are a sneaky option with Sean Payton having the Broncos on a quick turnaround after making the playoffs in 2024 with rookie quarterback Bo Nix.
Our best bets are that the Packers-Bears game in Chicago, the matchup in Pittsburgh, and home games against the Commanders and Ravens will be real prime-time options for Green Bay in 2025. Outside of that, the matchups against the Bengals, Broncos, Cowboys, and Eagles all check a lot of boxes.
We will see once and for all on Wednesday. Still, with recent years having schedule leaks beforehand, it may come earlier than that.