CLEVELAND, Ohio — When the NFL schedule dropped, Browns analysts Mary Kay Cabot and Dan Labbe weren’t focused on opponents or bye weeks. Instead, they were stunned by a glaring omission that speaks volumes about how the league views Cleveland heading into 2025.
“Well, the first thing that stood out to me, I would have to say, is the fact that they completely got snubbed on prime-time games. They don’t have any prime-time games. And I think that’s pretty telling. It just says that the NFL didn’t really take the Browns seriously for this year,” Cabot revealed on the Orange and Brown Talk podcast.
The Browns’ complete exclusion from national spotlight games represents a stunning fall from grace. Even more shocking? The team doesn’t even have a basic Thursday night appearance, which has become almost standard across the league.
“Like they don’t even have a Thursday night game on this schedule, which is, that’s pretty rare for a team to not have a Thursday night game,” Labbe noted during their schedule breakdown discussion.
The implications go beyond just fan disappointment. Cabot points out that lacking primetime exposure creates a significant disadvantage for Cleveland players hoping to earn individual recognition.
“The bad part about it is for some of the players, it doesn’t get them out there the way that they might need to be out there to make Pro Bowls and to get some of these individual awards,” she explained. “That’s a lot harder to do when you’re not out there playing in prime time in front of the whole nation.”
The closest the Browns get to a featured timeslot is a November 16th game against Baltimore at 4:25pm on CBS. Otherwise, it’s a steady diet of 1:00pm Sunday kickoffs — a scheduling pattern reminiscent of the team’s darkest rebuilding years.
“I thought this was a little bit of a slap in the face to the Cleveland Browns, but it’s just a sign of the times,” Cabot concluded.
The message from the NFL schedule makers seems crystal clear: Cleveland needs to earn back its national relevance. The Browns are being treated like a team that went 3-14 last season rather than a squad that battled through injuries to remain competitive two years ago.
For a franchise that appeared to be turning the corner after making the playoffs in 2020 and staying competitive despite quarterback issues in 2023, this schedule treatment suggests the NFL sees the Browns as regressing rather than progressing.
With quarterback uncertainty headlining Cleveland’s offseason concerns, the lack of prime-time games sets up a clear redemption narrative. The Browns must now fight their way back into national relevance the hard way — by winning enough games to force the league to take notice in 2025.
As the podcast discussion revealed, this prime-time snub may be just the beginning of the Browns’ challenges, with a brutal schedule featuring few soft spots awaiting them this fall.
Here’s the podcast for this week:
Listen and subscribe to the Orange and Brown Talk podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Football Insider newsletter free trial: Take a minute and sign up for a free trial of our Football Insider newsletter, featuring exclusive content from cleveland.com's Browns reporters.
Note: Artificial intelligence was used to help generate this story from the Cleveland Orange and Brown Talk Podcast by cleveland.com. Visitors to cleveland.com have asked for more text stories based on website podcast discussions.