{"id":54971,"date":"2025-05-16T14:43:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T14:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/54971\/"},"modified":"2025-05-16T14:43:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T14:43:12","slug":"5-worst-games-of-season-but-youll-still-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/54971\/","title":{"rendered":"5 worst games of season, but you’ll still watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"play\"<\/p>\n

Five NFL games we can’t wait to watch in the 2025 season<\/p>\n

The NFL schedule for the 2025-2026 season has been released. Here are a few games on our must-watch list.<\/p>\n

Bad football is like bad pizza, right? Sure, comfort food has various degrees of excellence \u2013 or lack thereof \u2013 but at the end of the day, you\u2019re probably still going to reach for it.<\/p>\n

Wednesday night\u2019s complete revelation of the 2025 NFL schedule<\/a> is similarly metaphoric to savoring something you bought on the Lower East Side \u2026 or wolfing down Chuck E. Cheese because the options are limited at that birthday party of 4-year-olds you\u2019re helping to chaperone.<\/p>\n

So while we\u2019ll breathlessly anticipate games like Ravens-Bills, Lions-Commanders or the Super Bowl 59 rematch between the Chiefs<\/a> and Eagles, we\u2019re here to list the five least-appetizing games on the 2025 scheduled in this space \u2013 ranked bad to worst \u2013 even though we suspect you\u2019ll still grab a slice (or five) anyway:<\/p>\n

How does the matchup initiating the league\u2019s 106th season<\/a> make the list? Weeelll, it\u2019s the end of summer. No more vacation. School is back in session. The weather is going to turn. The Cowboy Carter Tour will be over while the Cowboys embark on what will surely be a 30th consecutive tour around the league that won\u2019t conclude on Super Sunday.<\/p>\n

Stick to football? Fine.<\/p>\n

Few matchups are as overanalyzed and overburdened \u2013 in terms of their actual importance \u2013 as the first of the regular season\u2019s 272 games. And when you add \u201cAmerica\u2019s Team\u201d to the mix? If the Eagles win comfortably, the narrative will be that a team which largely dominated during the 2024 playoffs will be on its way to a successful Super Bowl defense. Any other outcome? Then the Eagles aren\u2019t nearly as good as you thought \u2026 and the Cowboys are back in a big way and under the radar no longer \u2026 plus, hey, maybe rookie head coach Brian Schottenheimer can become the first to get Jerry Jones a ring since Barry Switzer three decades ago.<\/p>\n

You can see where this is going, hot takes just running amok for days until the rest of the league\u2019s teams get out of the gate. Yes, it will be fun to have the NFL back and to ring in its return with one of the league\u2019s better rivalries and two of its most high-profile teams. But just a little bit of dread is baked in here, too.<\/p>\n

Why do I include this contest, which is appropriately buried at 1 p.m. ET on a Sunday? On its surface, it shapes up as one of the season\u2019s more lopsided pairings, the home team chasing a third consecutive division title (and much more) while the visitor seemingly remains in its decades-long quarterback \u2013 and holistic \u2013 purgatory. (Detroit rates seventh in my most recent power rankings<\/a>, 22 spots ahead of Cleveland.) Yet this game will roughly mark the 16th anniversary of the Lions\u2019 38-37 defeat of the Browns at Ford Field in 2009, when then-rookie QB Matthew Stafford \u2013 playing through a dislocated non-throwing shoulder \u2013 outdueled Brady Quinn and Co. (seriously) by throwing the game-winning touchdown pass on the final play in one of the best Alcoa Fantastic Finishes nobody saw or remembers … except me. (And make no mistake, Cleveland and Detroit were typically putrid back in 2009, combining for seven victories.) It\u2019s precisely why all manner of pizza gets consumed. And who knows, maybe Jared Goff<\/a> vs. Shedeur Sanders<\/a> \u2013 perhaps \u2013 is, um \u2026 “legendary?” Maybe?<\/p>\n

3. Houston Texans<\/a> at Seattle Seahawks, Oct. 20, 2025<\/p>\n

They should be fine teams, each coming off a 10-win effort in 2024 and both stocked with some of the league\u2019s compelling, younger players. But not only is this game in the dreaded 10 p.m. ET time slot that will regrettably return twice to Monday night this season, you\u2019ll also have to hope the WiFi doesn\u2019t blink \u2013 this showdown in the Pacific Northwest is exclusive to ESPN+ \u2013 or you could miss the next time Sam Darnold or C.J. Stroud gets sacked.<\/p>\n

2. Atlanta Falcons vs. Indianapolis Colts, Nov. 9, 2025<\/p>\n

If I want to watch this \u2013 if \u2013 then I have to get up by 9:30 a.m. ET to view the first regular-season game staged in Berlin<\/a>? Didn\u2019t the NFL foist Daniel Jones off on the Germans last year? (Yes. Yes it did.) Perhaps it\u2019s an unexpected barnburner between teams that could be playoff dark horses. Maybe Atlanta RB Bijan Robinson is even anchoring my fantasy lineup. And perhaps it\u2019s a battle of franchises that have typically been also-rans for the past decade in a game when the ball could quite realistically hit the ground half the time it\u2019s put into the air. Sorry, Deutschland.<\/p>\n

If you’re potentially feeling grateful after Thanksgiving weekend, you\u2019ll doubtless be over it by Monday night. Tom Coughlin, Eli Manning, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick won\u2019t be walking through that door \u2013 well maybe TB12 and BB will (game\u2019s in Foxborough, so never say never) \u2013 in what could very likely wind up a showdown between three-win teams with Drake Maye and Jaxson Dart, who might well be making his prime-time debut by that point of the season, at the controls. High degree of skepticism for a tasty meal here \u2026 even if leftovers sometimes taste better.<\/p>\n

All NFL news on and off the field.\u00a0Sign up<\/a>\u00a0for USA TODAY’s 4th and Monday newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five NFL games we can’t wait to watch in the 2025 season The NFL schedule for the 2025-2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[247,265,10498,4127,86,346,739,85,54,230,229,257,4143,2772,146,113,995,833,25,207,7,519,7839,221,253,1433,1029,1702,805,110,147,3310,32,2939,248,267,246,206,249,56,88,6,245,264,208,242,109,101,9,266,3177,222,225],"class_list":{"0":"post-54971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-american","9":"tag-american-football","10":"tag-bijan","11":"tag-bijan-robinson","12":"tag-browns","13":"tag-chiefs","14":"tag-city","15":"tag-cleveland","16":"tag-cleveland-browns","17":"tag-cowboys","18":"tag-dallas","19":"tag-dallas-cowboys","20":"tag-daniel","21":"tag-daniel-jones","22":"tag-detroit","23":"tag-detroit-lions","24":"tag-drake","25":"tag-drake-maye","26":"tag-eagles","27":"tag-england","28":"tag-football","29":"tag-giants","30":"tag-goff","31":"tag-houston","32":"tag-houston-texans","33":"tag-jared","34":"tag-jared-goff","35":"tag-jones","36":"tag-kansas","37":"tag-kansas-city-chiefs","38":"tag-lions","39":"tag-matthew","40":"tag-matthew-stafford","41":"tag-maye","42":"tag-national","43":"tag-national-sports","44":"tag-neutral","45":"tag-new","46":"tag-new-england-patriots","47":"tag-new-york-giants","48":"tag-news","49":"tag-nfl","50":"tag-overall","51":"tag-overall-neutral","52":"tag-patriots","53":"tag-philadelphia","54":"tag-philadelphia-eagles","55":"tag-robinson","56":"tag-sports","57":"tag-sports-news","58":"tag-stafford","59":"tag-texans","60":"tag-york"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}