Thanksgiving is a day of celebration for Detroit Lions fans nowadays, as the team has been doing nothing but winning in the regular season since 2023. However, winning on Thanksgiving is another beast entirely for the Lions, who regularly play during the holiday.
This year, the Lions will be taking on their divisional rivals in the Green Bay Packers for a Thanksgiving afternoon showdown at Ford Field. This contest is truly a toss-up, and it has extreme implications on the teams' ability to still win the NFC North with just six games left on the calendar.
Another team playing on Thanksgiving is the Cincinnati Bengals, and quarterback Joe Burrow seems primed to return from his turf toe woes against the Baltimore Ravens on Thanksgiving night. Burrow was asked about playing on Thanksgiving, and his answer was...quite brutally honest about the Lions of the past.
“You grow up going through Thanksgiving — you have your meals, and you sit on the couch ... watch the Lions vs. somebody, watch Matthew Stafford throw 300–400 yards with Calvin Johnson, and probably lose the game.”
#Bengals QB Joe Burrow on playing on Thanksgiving:
“You grow up going through Thanksgiving — you have your meals, and you sit on the couch ... watch the Lions vs. somebody, watch Matthew Stafford throw 300–400 yards with Calvin Johnson, and probably lose the game.”😂 pic.twitter.com/fTsagL7ymN
— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) November 25, 2025
Burrow gets brutally honest about Lions Thanksgiving history
Burrow is not wrong at all in his assessment, although Lions fans surely wish he was. But, it's known that Stafford and Johnson were a dynamic duo in Detroit that simply couldn't get it done in the postseason, and would barely scrape by in the regular season due to woeful mismanagement by Detroit's front office and coaching staff.
Stafford set a Thanksgiving day passing record back in 2017 when he passed Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo's previously held record of 2,338 passing yards in 10 Thanksgiving games. Up to that point in Stafford's career, he had been averaging 317 passing yards on Thanksgiving day.
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Johnson, on the flip side, had set the all-time Thanksgiving day touchdown record by 2014. He had three touchdowns in his final Thanksgiving day game back in 2015, and he finished up his career with the Lions with a total of 11,619 receiving yards. That's still good for the franchise record.
During their peak, the Stafford-led Lions suffered a major Thanksgiving day losing streak. They lost four games in a row with Stafford in tow, only snapping their seven-game losing streak on the holiday last season.
The Lions are 5-14 since 2006 on Thanksgiving. That's an abysmal record considering it's literally tradition that they show up on our screens every year, on the same day, to try and add some joy to fans' day. They won last year's contest against the Chicago Bears, which directly resulted in the firing of former Bears head coach Matt Eberflus. Little did the Lions know that it would set off a chain reaction that would impact their offense in the present day.
Detroit has to set a new precedent for itself on Thanksgiving with a victory against Green Bay, unless they enjoy hearing the depressing retellings of past Lions luck during the holiday from current quarterbacks.