NFL Thanksgiving games: Eagles came close to playing, league makes a change, and more

Six NFL teams will take the field Thursday in the league’s latest incarnation of an annual Thanksgiving ritual, but for the 10th straight year the Eagles won’t be among them.

Instead, the Birds will face the Chicago Bears on Amazon’s Black Friday game, which will stream for free on Prime Video Friday afternoon. It will also air on Fox 29 in and around Philadelphia.

The last time the Birds played on Thanksgiving was in 2015, when they were blown out by the Lions in Chip Kelly’s final season as head coach.

The NFL decided to go big this year, pitting the Dallas Cowboys against the Kansas City Chiefs on CBS in a matchup likely to become the most-watched NFL regular-season game in league history. The current high mark is a 2022 Thanksgiving game between the Cowboys and New York Giants, which drew 42.1 million viewers.

With the Cowboys and Chiefs both coming off comeback wins and fighting for playoff spots, that bet paid off. But the league seriously considered scheduling Eagles-Cowboys in Dallas for Thanksgiving, which would’ve been just the third time the NFC East rivals faced off on the holiday — they previously played one another in 1989 and 2014.

Maybe the league got sick of the Eagles’ holiday dominance. The Birds are 6-1 in games played on Thanksgiving, the highest win percentage (.857) in NFL history among teams that played at least five games.

This year’s NFL slate reveals a major shift for the league. Instead of dumping mediocre matchups on Thanksgiving knowing they’ll get good TV ratings — think of all those bad Cowboys-Washington games — the league turned to marquee teams in an attempt to maximize viewership.

“We decided that based on last year, and the numbers, and the audience, and how many people were watching, to really see how high Thanksgiving can get,” Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president of media distribution, told Front Office Sports.

The NFL also pushed the start of the first Thanksgiving game back 30 minutes, from 12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m. Schroeder told the Detroit Free Press the earlier kickoff time was potentially lowering viewership numbers slightly.

“We look at the data where we can be informed,” Schroeder said. “It told us there’s a lot more fans that are home, that are back from wherever they are Thanksgiving morning to be on their couches and being able to watch. So that felt like a really obvious thing from a media perspective.”

This game will only have playoff implications for the Eagles if the Birds lose a few more games.

While both the Packers and Lions are among a cluster of teams atop the NFC, the Eagles hold tiebreakers against both thanks to head-to-head wins against the Packers and Lions in back-to-back weeks earlier this month.

The game does have big ramifications in the NFC North, which the Packers are looking to win for the first time since 2021. Green Bay defeated Detroit way back in Week 1 and could sweep the season series with a win on Thanksgiving.

This is the 29th time the Packers and Lions have faced off on Thanksgiving, with Detroit holding a 12-9-1 edge overall.

The Cowboys have new life after their 21-point comeback win against the Eagles Sunday.

While the NFC East is likely out of reach for the Cowboys (barring an epic collapse by the Eagles), Dak Prescott and company are still alive in the wild-card hunt. A win on Thanksgiving would improve the Cowboys’ chances of making the postseason to 22%, according to the New York Times playoff simulator. A loss drops their already poor odds down to just 6%.

The Chiefs are in a similar situation, though things aren’t as dire. Despite entering Week 13 in 10th place in the AFC, Kansas City is right in the middle of the wild-card hunt with important divisional games against the Houston Texans and Los Angeles Chargers coming up.

Outside of Joe Burrow’s return to the Bengals, the Thanksgiving nightcap has limited interest to Eagles fans.

The Bengals would need to pull off a remarkable streak of wins to sneak into the playoffs. They head into Thanksgiving looking to end a four-game losing streak, and over the next three weeks they’ll play the Ravens twice and face Josh Allen and the Bills in Buffalo.

The Ravens enter the game back in first place in the AFC North, though they’re tied with the Pittsburgh Steelers at 6-5. The Ravens’ offense has sputtered this season along with Lamar Jackson, who is playing despite ankle, knee, and toe issues. But the Bengals have the second-worst run defense in the league, which Derrick Henry and the Ravens could end up feasting on.

All three games will stream on their network’s respective subscription streaming services — Fox One for Fox, Paramount+ for CBS, and Peacock for NBC.

The games also will stream on any so-called skinny bundle that carries the three broadcast networks, including YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV, and DirecTV Stream. Most offer a free trial.

The one exception this year is Disney-owned Fubo, whose more than 1.3 million subscribers won’t be able to stream Thursday’s Bengals-Ravens on NBC due to a carriage dispute with NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast.

As a result, all of NBC’s TV networks — including Bravo, CNBC, MS NOW, and NBC Sports Philadelphia here in the city — are dark on Fubo, with no sign of a deal on the horizon.

If you live in the Philadelphia TV market, you can stream all three games on NFL+, the league’s subscription streaming service, which runs $6.99 a month. But that only includes tablets and mobile devices.

If you’re looking to stream the games for free and you live in or around Philadelphia, your best option is using a digital antenna, since all three will air on broadcast television.

The Jacksonville Jaguars remain the only NFL team to never play a Thanksgiving game.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but it’s mostly because the Jaguars just haven’t been that good or compelling, and there are less opportunities for AFC teams than NFC teams.

It doesn’t help Jacksonville has only played a total of nine road games against the Lions and Cowboys in 30 seasons since entering the league in 1995, and isn’t scheduled to face either team this season.

The NFL’s old TV rules didn’t help, either. Prior to 2022, any Jaguars-Lions or Jaguars-Cowboys game would have had to air on CBS, which had the rights to broadcast AFC teams when they were on the road facing NFC teams.

Maybe they’ll get their shot next season, since the Jaguars appear to be on the upswing and will face the Cowboys at AT&T Stadium in 2026. Then again, if the NFL is focusing on big matchups, Jacksonville may be out of luck.