2025 NFL schedule: 49ers, Vikings among biggest winners and losers
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Christmas in May is upon us, as the NFL has announced the full regular-season league schedule for all 32 teams. Fans can now book flights, hotels and plan vacations to see their teams on the road, while players and coaches can check their bye weeks and which games will likely be played in inclement weather.
With the dates announced, FOX Sports NFL reporters Eric D. Williams and Greg Auman take a closer look at which teams benefited the most from the league’s schedule makers, and which might have a bone to pick with the folks at NFL headquarters.
Winners
By virtue of their surprising last-place finish in the NFC West last season and facing the nose-pinching NFC South and AFC South this year, the 49ers are set up for a bounce-back in 2025. San Francisco plays the easiest schedule heading into the regular season, based on an opponent winning percentage of .415 last year.
Even though they finished 6-11 in 2024, the 49ers have five prime-time games. Four of San Francisco’s first six games are on the road, but the 49ers were rewarded with a late bye in Week 14, followed by three of their last four games at home. If they can stay healthy, the 49ers should compete for a playoff spot in 2025.
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RELATED: 2025 NFL schedule release: Win-loss predictions, analysis for every team
The Bengals have not had a winning record through the first five games of any season since the team’s Super Bowl season in 2021. But they have an opportunity to change that trend, with games against the Browns, Jaguars, Vikings and Broncos to start this year. Cincinnati also has the shortest amount of travel of any team in the league, at 8,753 miles.
Last year, the Bengals played five prime-time road games — more than any other team in NFL history — and went 3-2 in those contests. This season, they have three of their four prime-time games on the road. But Cincinnati also closes out the year with winnable games against the Dolphins, Cardinals and Browns. The Bengals should be looking at double-digit wins this season.
In what can only make Jerry Jones smile, the Cowboys have seven prime-time games this season, up from six last season. That’s surprising for a team that finished 7-10 in 2024, moved on from Mike McCarthy and hired someone with no head-coaching experience in offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer. The prime-time games include the NFL season opener on the road against the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles and a Thanksgiving Day home contest against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. Dallas is the first team since the Packers in 2011 to play the league’s kickoff game, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day in the same season.
The Cowboys have to play the Eagles and Commanders twice this season — the teams that met in the NFC Championship Game last year. Dallas faces four playoff teams in its first nine games before taking a bye week in Week 10. The Cowboys will have QB Dak Prescott back, after he played only eight games last year due to a hamstring injury. Prescott has a 33-8 career record against the NFC East.
Mike Vrabel and the Patriots spent the most money out of any team in free agency, filled the offense with playmakers to support second-year quarterback Drake Maye through the draft and now get the third-easiest schedule in the NFL (.429 opponents’ winning percentage).
Like the 49ers, New England plays every team from the NFC South, one of the weakest divisions in the league. The Patriots also have three of their first four games at home (Raiders, Steelers and Panthers) and finish the year at the Jets and at home against the Dolphins. Vrabel is in line to double New England’s win total from last year’s 4-13 campaign.
LOSERS
This is a first, with Minnesota playing back-to-back road games in Europe, first in Dublin against the Steelers and then in London against the Browns in Weeks 4 and 5. That means the Vikings will stay overseas and have the entire week between games in London — a challenge logistically to be away from your facility for that long. Teams playing in Europe generally fly over Friday and back on Monday morning, so this is much more disruptive to normal game-week preparations.
Even without that, it’s a doozy of a schedule — arguably the toughest division in the league, plus the entire NFC East. With more and more games going to Europe, the Vikings will be the guinea pigs for how a team can handle an extended stay away from home. Between the two international games and byes, they don’t have a true road game between Week 1 and Week 8. They do get to end the season with back-to-back home games against key division rivals, getting the Lions on Christmas and then the Packers in Week 18.
It’s hard to repeat a 15-2 regular-season record with any schedule, let alone what Detroit faces this fall. They have nine road games, and seven of them are against 2024 playoff teams, including trips to both Super Bowl teams. The other road games are the Bengals and what should be an improved Bears team. Their season is bookended by the three division games, opening at Green Bay and closing at Minnesota and Chicago.
There’s a wild stretch where Minnesota plays four straight games against AFC opponents from Weeks 3-6, including trips to Baltimore, Cincinnati and Kansas City. The Vikings come out of their Week 8 bye with a three-week stretch that could mirror a playoff run: home against Minnesota, then at Washington, then at Philadelphia. First-place schedules are always hard, but this is a daunting schedule for a team that lost both of its coordinators to head coaching jobs in the offseason.
New York went 3-14 last year, and the “last-place schedule” the Giants drew is the most difficult by opponents’ 2024 records. There were five NFC teams that won 11-plus games, and they have seven games against those five teams, plus the Chiefs, Chargers and Broncos. The first two months are challenging enough that Brian Daboll may not make it to the second half of the season. The Giants open at Washington and at Dallas, then have the Chiefs and Chargers at home, with the lone easy game of the lot a trip to New Orleans in Week 5. Then they get the Eagles twice in three weeks.
It’s a nasty enough start that the Giants might go with a veteran like Russell Wilson under center rather than throwing rookie QB Jaxson Dart in right away for a baptism by fire. Three of the last four are at home, which is nice, but will the team’s leadership survive long enough to enjoy that?
One of the odd quirks of an NFL schedule is uneven prep time — like when one team is coming off a bye and the other team is not, which gives that team an extra week to rest and prepare. Usually there’s some balance — if you have an opponent with a bonus week, you wind up getting the same on your bye. But that’s not always the case. Take the Commanders, who face three opponents coming off their byes: the Bears in Week 6, the Seahawks in Week 9 and the Giants in Week 15. And when they have their bye, the Commanders face a Broncos team also coming off its bye in Week 13.
The league goes through hundreds of thousands of schedule permutations trying to make sure the 272-game package is fair to all parties, but this is a legit adversity, and something the Commanders have a right to be upset about. They have quick turnarounds throughout their schedule, too: a road Thursday in Week 2, a Christmas Thursday game after a Saturday home game. Washington has a ton of spotlight games to highlight an up-and-coming team, but the schedule-makers didn’t do the Commanders any favors.
Eric D. Williams has reported on the NFL for more than a decade, covering the Los Angeles Rams for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Chargers for ESPN and the Seattle Seahawks for the Tacoma News Tribune. Follow him on X at @eric_d_williams.
Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.
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