The 2026 NFL schedule will be fully revealed Thursday night, but we’ve already seen a handful of marquee matchups announced by the league.
As usual, the league is giving fans something they never want: A Week 1 prime-time matchup between two teams that didn’t make the playoffs last season.
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This year’s Sunday Night Football debut will feature the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants, giving viewers a matchup carried by the mystique of their history and the size of their TV markets, rather than the quality of the talent on their respective rosters and the on-field product.
Last year, the Cowboys sputtered to a 7-9-1 record, which was still good enough for second place in an NFC East that only required 11 wins for the Philadelphia Eagles to coast to the division title. At the bottom of that same division rested the Giants, whose 4-13 record put them just one game ahead of the three teams that tied for the worst record in the league in 2025.
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Look, we all know why the Cowboys always end up in nationally-televised slots, and it’s got little to do with how good the team actually is at the given moment. Ditto for teams from the massive New York market. Nobody’s naive to the ratings-driven process of decision-making when it comes to handing out these prime-time slots.
But this is Week 1 of the NFL regular season we’re talking about here.
After the long, dark offseason without any real games, you could put any pair of NFL teams in that slot, and the rabid football games starving for on-field action would still tune in. It could be the Titans vs. the Cardinals, the Saints vs. the Panthers, or the Browns vs. the Browns, and everyone would still watch.
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I’m not pretending the Cowboys and Giants don’t have talented players, either. Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb move the needle plenty. But the Giants’ most compelling storyline is their new head coach (John Harbaugh), and their most recognizable talents (Malik Nabers, Cam Skattebo) are both coming off season-ending injuries. It’s still unclear whether or not they’ll be on the field for Week 1, while their promising but oft-injured quarterback (Jaxson Dart) will have to prove he can make it through the entire game without getting banged up. The Giants traded away their best defensive player in Dexter Lawrence just before the draft, too.
There are so many more compelling matchups the schedule-makers could have given us. Lamar Jackson vs. Joe Burrow? Josh Allen vs. Drake Maye? Caleb Williams and Ben Johnson trying to beat the Detroit Lions after getting swept by them last season? Give me any of those over “America’s Team” and the “Football Giants” all day long.
Every year, the NFL force-feeds fans a bunch of big-market teams in prime-time slots, regardless of how good those teams actually are. I know we shouldn’t expect better at this point, but it’s still a letdown to watch it play out again this year.
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This story was originally published by Athlon Sports on May 14, 2026, where it first appeared in the NFL section. Add Athlon Sports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.