First sneak peek of my 2026 #NFL#MockSchedule: Week 1
How would you feel about your team's week 1 opponent?
Full mock schedule to drop later this week | Graphic credits: @NerdingonNFL | View my 2025 mock schedule on my profile
This will be the fourth time in the last five matchups between the #Seahawks and #Patriots that the game has aired on #SNFonNBC.
2025: Super Bowl LX
2024: SEA 23 - NE 20 (FOX)
2020: SEA 35 - NE 30 (SNF)
2016: SEA 31 - NE 24 (SNF)
2014: Super Bowl XLIX - NE 28 - SEA 24 (NBC)
Definitely some random ones in here. But overall, the quality of international games has improved over the last few years.
Colts have been in Europe a lot recently.
Eagles will go 24 years between visits to Jacksonville.
Jags losing a divisional game was expected, but Houston is a big one to take abroad.
Steelers go right from Dublin to Paris.
Bengals haven’t been abroad since 2019. The NFL opted to go with them instead of CHI and KC, who have marketing rights in Spain.
Huge matchup on FOX in Germany between NE and DET.
The Vikings are definitely the most surprising pick here, given that they don’t have marketing rights in Mexico and they played two games in Europe last year. But given the SNF timeslot, they fit well.
After record-shattering viewership metrics from last year’s Thanksgiving slate, it feels like the NFL is chasing those numbers going into this year. I’d expect the Lions to have a big NFC North matchup on Thanksgiving, too.
Until last year, the league seemed to schedule Thanksgiving games as if people would watch anyways (hence the number of times we’d have to watch the Commanders and Giants when they were bad) and save their bigger matchups as assets to spread in other windows throughout the season.
Also had this one in my mock by the way 😁
The Dallas #Cowboys will play their home opener on Sunday, September 20th. I am guessing that they’d play Arizona or Washington.
Possible opponents:
#Eagles#Commanders#Buccaneers#Jaguars#Titans#Cardinals
(They won’t play the Giants again, and the 49ers won’t play on the road after Australia)
This matchup will take place at 1:00 or 4:25 PM EDT, as they won’t have back-to-back Sunday night games or a Monday game going into Brazil.
Since NBC has the Cowboys in week 1 and CBS has the Cowboys in week 3, I’d imagine this matchup would most likely take place on FOX. FOX would hate to wait until week 4 for their first Cowboys game.
FOX is probably going to have the week 1 doubleheader since CBS had it last year. CBS has the week 3 doubleheader. Unless week 2 happens to be the week where both networks get doubleheaders, I’d expect CBS to have the rights to the 4:25 PM game for week 2. It’s highly unlikely that the NFL would give FOX consecutive doubleheaders to open the year.
Thus, the Cowboys will most likely play this matchup on FOX at 1pm. If that’s the case, I’d rule out the Eagles right away as that matchup would never be scheduled for 1pm. Titans and Jaguars would be unlikely matchups in this window as we’d probably see those games on CBS. The Buccaneers are possible, but less likely because they have a stadium conflict in Week 1, so they’d open the season with consecutive road games if they play at Dallas week 2.
With all of this being said, my best guess for their home opener is the Cardinals, followed by the Commanders.
I could be completely wrong, but this my thought process given all the nuances of NFL scheduling. A lot of this is speculation, and it would take one thing to ruin this entire thread of deductive reasoning. We’ll find out their true opponent soon enough 🙂