A breakdown of the best things from the 2025 Detroit Lions schedule release.
On Wednesday, the NFL dropped the 2025 schedule for all 32 teams.
Here are the six things I like most about the Detroit Lions ’ 2025 schedule.
Weather for away games is not as bad as anticipated
The Lions knock out four away games in the first six weeks of the season at Packers , Ravens, Bengals, and Chiefs—all played by mid-October. All of those games had the potential to be cold-weather, tough-conditions contests.
Detroit only has two outdoor games after Thanksgiving this year: at Los Angeles and at Chicago. That’s pretty favorable, considering they had six away games that could’ve been wintery conditions. We’ll see what Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia look like in mid-November when the Lions come to town. But if the weather cooperates there, it’s possible the Lions will escape with just one frigid game.
Non-local fans will be able to watch almost every game
Incredibly, 12 of the Lions’ 16 known games are nationally televised, which makes for a nice treat to those outside of the local market (Week 18 has yet to be determined). The Lions will be featured nationally on CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN/ABC, Prime Video, and Netflix—which is a minor annoyance about how many streaming services you need, but good for access and marketability.
NFL fans will know this team front to back by the end of the season.
Middle of the season bye week
After an annoyingly early Week 5 bye last year, the Lions’ 2025 bye week is right near the middle of the season: in Week 8. It’s a little annoying that Detroit’s bye week is cut a little short due to them playing on Monday night in Week 7, but I’ll still take the nice split of seven games before the bye and 10 after.
Favorable end-of-season stretch
While Detroit has a pretty tough run of things early in the season, when the playoff race gets tight in late November, the stretch to the end of the season looks somewhat favorable, given the difficulty of the entire schedule.
Here’s a look at their last seven games, four of which are at home:
Week 12: Home vs. Giants (3-14 last year)
Week 13: Home vs. Packers (11-6)
Week 14: Home vs. Cowboys (7-10)
Week 15: at Rams (10-7)
Week 16: Home vs. Steelers
(10-7)
Week 17: at Vikings (14-3)
Week 18: at Bears (5-12)
A balance of primetime games
I was a bit worried when I saw the Lions’ away opponents that a heavy majority of their primetime games would be on the road. While three of those nine games are, indeed, in primetime (at Ravens, at Chiefs, at Eagles—brutally tough games), Lions season ticket holders will get treated to a Monday night game against the Buccaneers (and at an earlier time, too!) and Thursday night game against the Cowboys.
Maybe those aren’t as marquee matchups as the road schedule, but I do like that Detroit is at least getting treated to some primetime moments.
FIVE home 1 p.m. ET games
While primetime home games are fun for the crazy Ford Field environment, the sports writer in me is super thankful that over half of the current home games will be done by 4:30 p.m. ET, and I may actually get home at a reasonable time those days.
Unfortunately, for those traveling with the team, there are zero 1 p.m. ET games on the road.