While marketers often consider Super Bowl spots the biggest advertising moment of the NFL season, the league’s 32 marketing teams get their time to shine before the games even kick off.
Here are the teams that scored PRWeek’s approval for the most creative spots announcing 2026 season schedules on May 14.
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New York Giants draw up the schedule with ‘Winston Van Gogh’
New York Giants QB Jameis Winston donned a beret and painter’s apron underneath his Giant’s varsity jacket to play a game of Giants Schedule Pictionary with fans spotted near New York City’s Vessel landmark to reveal the team’s schedule.
Fans who guessed the correct team based on “Winston Van Gogh’s” drawings scored free tickets to the correlating New York Giants game. Winston drew up the schedule with a guitar for the Nashville Titans; a spotted cat for the Jacksonville Jaguars; and Chomps, the official dog mascot for the Cleveland Browns.
“I have a hard time explaining to people how important he really is to this team,” one fan wrote of Winston’s star role in the spot.
Seattle Seahawks creates a cologne commercial
The Seattle Seahawks took “smells like football season” to another level, with a sensual cologne commercial with floating footballs and players re-enacting Greek God Sisyphus’ fate of pushing a rock up a hill, but with a player rolling a giant football up a mountain.
In the same breath – or sniff – the team promoted fragrances for the league’s competitors, with a tiny perfume bottle for the New York Giants fragrance, a butt-shaped, Tush Push fragrance for the Philadelphia Eagles to honor the “biggest contribution they have made to the NFL,” and a cologne with notes of “clam chowda” and “Boston baked beans” for the New England Patriots.
“This is awesome,” one fan, @hawksfootball_12, commented. “Can this fragrance be found anywhere?”
Los Angeles Chargers transformed games into Halo missions
Partnering with Halo, the Los Angeles Chargers presented each game of the season as a series of military science fiction video game quests. Forecasting “clipped wings” for its week one game against the Arizona Cardinals and poking fun at Buffalo Bills player Keon Coleman’s viral 2024 moment when he asked for cookies at a press conference snack table, the schedule announcement even gained praise from fans of competing teams.
“Bills fan, but I can always count on LA to have a fire schedule release,” one commenter – a fan who runs a Buffalo Bills news outlet called the Buffalo Brief – wrote.
Buffalo Bills marketing team hires QB Josh Allen
The Buffalo Bills transported fans into the marketing team’s pitch room with a brainstorm session pitch featuring QB Josh Allen. With “no ideas are bad ideas” penned onto the conference room’s whiteboard, the team pitched “schedule-maxxing” and anime-themed spots.
The final ad combined two out-of-field ideas: a giant chrysalis proposed by Allen as a “high concept” metaphor for the team’s growth); and a barbershop quartet who sang this season’s lineup. The video prompted fans and NFL partners to chime in on which ideas they would have picked from the pitch session.
“Robbed of an anime release schedule,” YouTube wrote.
Tennessee Titans conducts street interviews with NFL lookalikes
The Tennessee Titans took to the streets of Tennessee to find a lookalike from each team it’s slated to play this season. The spot conducted a street interview and snapped a picture of each lookalike, revealing games’ dates at the bottom of each side-by-side comparison.
Encounters with lookalikes for New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, Philadelphia Eagles chief security officer Dom DiSandro (aka “Big Dom”) and Houston Texans QB C.J. Stroud engaged more than just the community on Tennessee's streets.
“This is the best one I’ve seen yet,” one fan commented.
This story first appeared on PRWeek U.S.