Bad football is like bad pizza, right? Sure, comfort food has various degrees of excellence – or lack thereof – but at the end of the day, you’re probably still going to reach for it.
Wednesday night’s complete revelation of the 2025 NFL schedule is similarly metaphoric to savoring something you bought on the Lower East Side … or wolfing down Chuck E. Cheese because the options are limited at that birthday party of 4-year-olds you’re helping to chaperone.
So while we’ll breathlessly anticipate games like Ravens-Bills, Lions-Commanders or the Super Bowl 59 rematch between the Chiefs and Eagles, we’re here to list the five least-appetizing games on the 2025 scheduled in this space – ranked bad to worst – even though we suspect you’ll still grab a slice (or five) anyway:
5. Dallas Cowboys at Philadelphia Eagles, Sept. 4, 2025
How does the matchup initiating the league’s 106th season make the list? Weeelll, it’s 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’t conclude on Super Sunday.
Stick to football? Fine.
Few matchups are as overanalyzed and overburdened – in terms of their actual importance – as the first of the regular season’s 272 games. And when you add “America’s Team” 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’t nearly as good as you thought … and the Cowboys are back in a big way and under the radar no longer … plus, hey, maybe rookie head coach Brian Schottenheimer can become the first to get Jerry Jones a ring since Barry Switzer three decades ago.
You can see where this is going, hot takes just running amok for days until the rest of the league’s 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’s better rivalries and two of its most high-profile teams. But just a little bit of dread is baked in here, too.
4. Cleveland Browns at Detroit Lions, Sept. 28, 2025
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’s 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 – and holistic – purgatory. (Detroit rates seventh in my most recent power rankings, 22 spots ahead of Cleveland.) Yet this game will roughly mark the 16th anniversary of the Lions’ 38-37 defeat of the Browns at Ford Field in 2009, when then-rookie QB Matthew Stafford – playing through a dislocated non-throwing shoulder – 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’s precisely why all manner of pizza gets consumed. And who knows, maybe Jared Goff vs. Shedeur Sanders – perhaps – is, um … “legendary?” Maybe?
3. Houston Texans at Seattle Seahawks, Oct. 20, 2025
They should be fine teams, each coming off a 10-win effort in 2024 and both stocked with some of the league’s 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’ll also have to hope the WiFi doesn’t blink – this showdown in the Pacific Northwest is exclusive to ESPN+ – or you could miss the next time Sam Darnold or C.J. Stroud gets sacked.
2. Atlanta Falcons vs. Indianapolis Colts, Nov. 9, 2025
If I want to watch this – if – then I have to get up by 9:30 a.m. ET to view the first regular-season game staged in Berlin? Didn’t the NFL foist Daniel Jones off on the Germans last year? (Yes. Yes it did.) Perhaps it’s 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’s 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’s put into the air. Sorry, Deutschland.
1. New York Giants at New England Patriots, Dec. 1, 2025
If you’re potentially feeling grateful after Thanksgiving weekend, you’ll doubtless be over it by Monday night. Tom Coughlin, Eli Manning, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick won’t be walking through that door – well maybe TB12 and BB will (game’s in Foxborough, so never say never) – 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 … even if leftovers sometimes taste better.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NFL schedule release: 5 worst games of season, but you’ll still watch
