NFL guide
The NFL week on one page
This page follows pro football from the season opener in early September to the Super Bowl in February. Any game in progress is pinned to the top with a red LIVE label. After that comes the rest of the week, date by date, so Thursday night, the Sunday slate and Monday night each sit under their own heading.
A matchup joins the list when we have streams ready, and its Watch buttons unlock 60 minutes before kickoff. NFL Network, which is on the air all day and night, sits below the dated games and again on the 24/7 channels page.
How the season is built
Eighteen weeks of regular season
The regular season lasts 18 weeks. Teams play in 17 of them and get one bye week off, so from October on a few clubs are missing from most weekends. The rhythm hardly changes: a single game on Thursday night, most of the league on Sunday, then Monday night to close the week, occasionally with two games.
A handful of dates break that rhythm. Thanksgiving Thursday has three games, with Detroit and Dallas at home as they have been for decades. In recent seasons the league has also played on Christmas Day, whatever day of the week it lands on. Once the college regular season ends in December, some games move to Saturdays, and the final week usually opens with a Saturday doubleheader before a full Sunday.
Games abroad
Each fall the league stages several regular-season games abroad, most of them in Europe. Those tend to kick off at 9:30 AM ET on Sunday, hours before anything else, so look at the very top of Sunday's list.
Playoffs and the Super Bowl
Fourteen teams reach the playoffs, seven from the AFC and seven from the NFC, and the top seed in each conference sits out the first round. Wild Card weekend in mid-January spreads six games across Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The Divisional round has four, and both Conference Championship games are played on one Sunday. The Super Bowl comes two weeks after that, in February, with an early evening kickoff on the Eastern clock.
Usual kickoff times
| Slot | Kickoff (ET) |
|---|---|
| Thursday night | 8:15 PM |
| Sunday morning, games abroad | 9:30 AM |
| Sunday early window | 1:00 PM |
| Sunday late window | 4:05 PM or 4:25 PM |
| Sunday night | 8:20 PM |
| Monday night | 8:15 PM; on doubleheader nights the other game can start earlier or later |
A regular-season game takes a little over three hours from kickoff to the last snap. The LIVE label here covers three and a quarter hours, so a game with a long overtime can flip to Ended before it is decided. Keep watching: the label has no effect on the broadcast, and every row on the game page can still be opened.
Getting the most from this page
- Sunday at 1:00 PM ET is the busiest moment of the football week. Open your game page before noon and leave the tab alone: the stream rows unlock at 12:00 PM ET and show up without you refreshing.
- NFL RedZone has a row of its own on Sunday afternoons. It cuts from game to game whenever a team gets inside the 20, which suits anyone tracking several teams or a fantasy lineup.
- Later in the season the league can move a game to a different Sunday slot at fairly short notice. Check the kickoff here on game day instead of trusting a schedule saved weeks ago.
- Following from London, Lagos or Manila? Each game page prints the kickoff on your local clock under the Eastern time, so there is nothing to convert.
- Canadian football and the spring UFL are not on this page. Both are on More sports.
NFL questions
My team is not on this week's list. Why?
It could be the team's bye week. Otherwise the game has not been added yet, and it may still appear once streams are set up.
What time can I press Watch?
An hour before kickoff. For an 8:20 PM Sunday night game that means 7:20 PM ET, and before then every row carries a small "Opens" time in place of the button.
What happens to a game page after the final snap?
The game leaves this list shortly after it ends. Its own page remains reachable for two weeks, labelled as a finished game, and then the address forwards here.
Are preseason games in August listed?
Only those that have streams lined up. Expect a much thinner list in August than from September on.
