I suppose you could say that I’ve changed my tune over the years when it comes to schedule release. Just a year ago, I compared it to a pizzeria revealing its menu (surprise: pizza). But as I’ve learned over the years, having talked to many coaches and players, that the order in which known games are placed, how far those games are from a growing slate of international games and which international games the team is chosen for matters a great deal. In fact, it can be largely predictive of how the coming season will play out, as I wrote more about this week.
What hasn’t changed is the way I look at “great” games. I could simply write a post about the “best” games of the upcoming season and just list the prime-time participants in some order. This is essentially what the networks do as the clamor for successful and reliable television programming hits a fever pitch. But my definition of “great” can carry many different connotations. What is at stake, both locally and globally? Whose success and failure does this matchup really boil down to? Writing about the NFL has given me a wonderful opportunity to view even the worst football at its highest stakes. I hope by taking a look at my best 11 games of the season (listed here in chronological order), you’ll agree.
2026 NFL schedule | AFC record predictions | NFC record predictions | The Rams and the league’s ‘creative Super Bowl’
Week 2: Lions at Bills, Thursday at 8:15 p.m. ET
I am not normally a new stadium guy. The other day, an aggregation outlet posted a list of the 10 most “iconic” NFL stadiums, and they almost all sounded like some corporate insurance partner rebranding, and one of the stadiums listed was MetLife—a gigantic cheese grater that swallows up one of the most beautiful skylines in the world. Most of them were built after 1990 and had all the characteristics of fake barnwood. But the Bills deserved a new stadium. The original Highmark had opened in 1973 (as Rich Stadium), during that hideous era of stadium construction that made everything look like an unsafe spaceship.
Seeing the Bills open their new place in a stand-alone Monday night game against the Lions will, at the very least, be incredibly aesthetically pleasing. This is the one spot on this list that I’ll allow the matchup to be secondary (though in this case it is a pair of teams that have been contenders who have failed in recent years to get over the hump and into the Super Bowl). Football is great because it’s perfectly suited for television, and some newer stadiums manage to give the broadcast experience a theatrical feel. I’d expect as much for the opening of the new stadium, though I will likely plan on muting a large segment of the broadcast in which I’m sure the commentators will make the whole thing seem like a benevolent gift from ownership when a significant amount of it was funded by the state of New York.
Week 3: Eagles at Bears, Monday at 8:15 p.m. ET
Beating the Eagles in a stand-alone Black Friday game was a cut-through-the-clutter win for Chicago in 2025 after having beaten a handful of lesser teams. This year it will be an early-season Monday Night Football contest that will provide a critical temperature check as it pertains to the health of Jalen Hurts’s relationship with new offensive coordinator Sean Mannion, against the health of a Bears defense that probably needed more reinforcements than it got this offseason. Obviously, more attention is placed on the former, with anemic prime-time performances often serving as the launching point for mass Eagles hysteria related to the age-old question of whether the offense is ineffective because of Hurts’s preferences, or if that has been a convenient excuse for certain coordinators that have not performed well. On its face, a Ben Johnson vs. Vic Fangio matchup is exquisite without any added factors. But this feels like it will be the first prime-time game of the season that harbors the weight of real consequences for the team that loses.
Week 5: Texans at Titans, Sunday at 1:00 p.m. ET
I would be absolutely stunned if DeMeco Ryans’s and Matt Burke’s unit in Houston doesn’t finish as the league’s No. 1 defense. On paper, this is one of the most talented defenses heading into a season that we’ve seen in the past decade. And it’s worth noting how well Cam Ward fares against that defense about a month into a pivotal second year. The Titans had to erase nearly everything about Ward’s first season, which is just about the worst case scenario for a No. 1 pick. While the depth of dysfunction wasn’t, say, Trevor Lawrence and Urban Meyer–esque, Ward was left to fend for himself in an offense that rarely provided sensible answers.
The Texans are bound to make any young quarterback look foolish, but with Brian Daboll helming the Titans’ offense and Tennessee investing in a true No. 1 wide receiver in Carnell Tate with the No. 4 pick, the question becomes: How foolish? Ward’s performance against the Texans improved game over game significantly in 2025, with his first game against Ryans resulting in a shutout and a career-worst 35.4 quarterback rating. The second game saw the Titans claw within three points, Ward throw a touchdown and no interceptions, and complete almost 65% of his passes.
Week 6: Jaguars vs. Texans (London), Sunday at 9:30 a.m. ET
Not to overload this slate with Texans talk, or the AFC South for that matter, but here’s one more. The Texans and Jaguars went about a pivotal offseason much differently. Jacksonville leaned on its process, comfortably let go of some key contributors and honed in on a hyper-specific draft strategy that saw general manager James Gladstone taking players that were, perhaps, not necessarily aligned with the national consensus. To be fair to Gladstone, he’s not an outlier. Coaches from the Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay trees, like Jacksonville head coach Liam Coen, have had a tendency to search for hyper-specific traits, which can weigh their importance when it comes to a team’s specific grading scale. This is a rambling way of saying that the Texans needed offensive line help, for example, and signed a handful of players we’re familiar with. The Jaguars needed help, too, but opted for in-house reinforcements. This game is important because it’s a benchmark in a burgeoning rivalry and a legitimate postseason test for two teams that should have realistic, deep postseason aspirations. It will also provide proof of concept from two teams approaching a winnable division and wide open conference with differing urgency.
Week 10: Lions vs. Patriots (Munich), Sunday at 9:30 a.m. ET
My working theory is that even preseason strength of schedule, which people often calculate based on the previous season’s records, matters to some degree. The 49ers and Patriots had the two easiest strengths of schedule going into last year, and San Francisco was able to weather some horrendous luck on the injury front, while the Patriots were able to glide to a wholly unexpected Super Bowl berth in Mike Vrabel’s first season.
This year, it’s the Lions who own the best theoretical strength of schedule, while also boasting a new offensive coordinator (Drew Petzing) and a renovated offensive line. Last season, much of Detroit’s struggles were blamed on brain drain, as Ben Johnson took a job within the division and Aaron Glenn left to become the head coach of the Jets. However, less is said about the fact that Detroit went into the season with the league’s third-hardest schedule in terms of carryover win percentage and took on a slate of games that offered very little in terms of respite. Seeing the Lions against a team that represented the AFC in the Super Bowl can and should offer a kind of recalibration of optics—even if that game is in Germany on what amounts to a neutral field. Here is a team that probably benefited too much from a schedule and got overrated versus a team whose theoretical window was obliterated by a difficult schedule, but may not be nearly as bad as we think. Vegas seems to agree, with the Lions’ season win total set at 10.5 and the Patriots’ at 9.5.
Week 10: Seahawks at Raiders, Sunday at 4:05 p.m. ET
How is Maxx Crosby doing? It’s a fair question, especially after this matchup against the Seahawks, which will be less than 48 hours before the trade deadline. Obviously, the concern with Crosby’s knee is long-term and, at least in the eyes of the medical community, more of a matter of risk assessment. If Crosby has eight sacks at the deadline and is then just a year and change away from being at a cut-off point in his contract, is he worth a first-round pick and perhaps some additional sweetener (the Ravens’ abandoned pact with Las Vegas reflected an asking price of two first-round picks, which was a step down from the Micah Parsons deal)? If he starts sluggishly and then pummels Charles Cross in this particular week, will it revive the market? The onus is, sadly, on the player to stay injury-free in a league with a 100% injury rate. Crosby could sustain an injury that is primarily unrelated to his surgically repaired knee and still receive discriminatory treatment from teams that won’t want to part with valuable (for now) 2027 draft capital. This will be a nice evaluation point. Is Crosby still double-teamed consistently? Has he maintained his efficacy, especially against the run? Does he fit into the new ecosystem being installed around Fernando Mendoza? This is the final chance to show contenders looking for an in-season upgrade.
Week 12: Commanders at Cardinals, Sunday at 4:25 p.m. ET
This is, on the surface, a Sonny Styles vs. Jeremiyah Love selection, but it also branches into some broader thoughts about the state of both franchises. Arizona’s schedule this season is, by all accounts, absolutely brutal. The Cardinals have one of the toughest preseason strengths of schedule, and there was almost no way for schedule-makers to shield them from weeks- and months-long hailstorms (this is what happens when three of the other teams in your division are Super Bowl contenders and you also face a division like the AFC West, in which three of those teams are Super Bowl contenders).
The Commanders were, on paper at least, one of the worst defenses in the NFL last year and enter the 2026 season as such (the Jets were also very bad, but we’ve put one Jets game too many on this list). So, I am marking this game on my own personal viewing calendar because I want to see how a versatile linebacker like Styles—who is billed as someone who makes the Commanders’ defense far less vulnerable against backs who can impact the passing game like Love—tips the scales against … Love himself. Love is billed (by me specifically) as one of the better short-yardage backs we’ve seen coming out of the draft in the past five years. One of his main draws is his ability to create yards in unfavorable circumstances, and the Cardinals are a team that desperately needs help in generating offense. Love was the choice with the No. 3 pick after a desperate period of attempting to trade down over several promising offensive line candidates.
Week 14: Giants at Seahawks, Sunday at 4:25 p.m. ET
Brian Daboll never had an offensive line good enough to stop the onslaught. This was true for Daniel Jones, who redeveloped poor habits and tried to use his mobility to the point of self-destruction. This was true despite the years in which the team had been boasting about identity-building at the position. Going back to 2015, we’ve seen the Giants line up Ereck Flowers, Will Hernandez, Andrew Thomas, Matt Peart, Evan Neal, Joshua Ezeudu, John Michael-Schmitz and now Francis Mauigoa, as the team continues to attempt a sea change in physicality (or merely capability) up front. Jaxson Dart was mobile enough in his rookie season to lessen the quarterback death march, finishing as one of the seven most prolific sack avoiders in the NFL.
All of that is to say that this game will feature new head coach, John Harbaugh, a new offensive line coach, Mike Bloomgren, and Mauigoa against the best defense in the NFL and, quite possibly, one of the most maddening defensive fronts we’ve seen in the past half-decade of professional football. The Seahawks are incredibly well-versed in dissecting a line player by player and exposing gaping weaknesses. I label this one of the best games of the season because it’s a wonderful proof-of-concept matchup for the young Harbaugh regime. Did selling out for the biggest-named coach in the cycle yield what the Giants so desperately wanted right away, which was to play in games like this and maintain their fans’ interest at least through the end of the third quarter?
Week 15: 49ers at Chargers, Thursday at 8:15 p.m. ET
In the prodigal son bowl, Mike McDaniel will host former boss and mentor Kyle Shanahan with an offense that McDaniel may have only conjured in a NyQuil-induced fever dream. The Chargers are nearly as deep as McDaniel’s Dolphins teams in terms of footspeed at the playmaking positions and are eons deeper in terms of offensive line depth, physicality and quarterback play. This will be the best set of tools at McDaniel’s disposal since he coordinated the run game for … Shanahan and the 49ers.
Similarly, the 49ers should be sporting a more evolved offense that takes the pressure off Christian McCaffrey. Mike Evans is the most archetypal Shanahan receiver to actually play for him since Julio Jones. And while it’s important for us to temper our excitement based on Evans’s age, the 49ers are doing in 2026 what I’d hoped they would do in ’25: pour as many resources as possible into the possibility that this is truly the last chance to win a Super Bowl with Trent Williams, George Kittle, McCaffrey and Kyle Juszczyk. I know we’ve been saying this about every iteration of the Chargers since 2017, but this team has the chance to be spectacular and could take over as a No. 1 appointment viewing entity based on how well the McDaniel–Justin Herbert relationship goes.
Week 16: Rams at Seahawks, Friday (Christmas) at 8:15 p.m. ET
This one is easy. Just as the Rams-Seahawks trilogy was, in effect, the 2025 NFL championship, their first meeting next season (the second is in Week 18) will be a precursor to a legitimate playoff game, assuming both teams stay healthy. Seattle will endure something of an offensive adjustment period under new coordinator Brian Fleury, and the Rams will enter the season as unquestioned Super Bowl favorites after retaining their entire 2025 staff and making night-and-day improvements to their secondary. But to assume the Seahawks will sit on their hands schematically after clobbering New England in the Super Bowl is a mistake.
Every year in this exercise, I pick one game that I believe will encapsulate the story of professional football in one tidy three-hour window. While, unfortunately, I will most likely watch this on tape delay (we are an open Christmas presents when the sun goes down kind of family, and Netflix went above and beyond to save the flatlining Christmas football series after a dismal 2025 where injuries decimated both games), I can guarantee that this is a matchup between the most copied offense (Rams) and most copied defense (Seahawks) in the NFL.
Week 17: Ravens at Bengals, Thursday at 8:15 p.m. ET
I know this is a long way out to project a Bengals team as relevant, given the unreliability of quarterback Joe Burrow, who has started 10 or fewer games in two of the past three seasons. That said, the Bengals and Ravens have the two best odds to win the AFC North. While I think the Browns will overperform their expected 6.5 win total, I don’t think it will be enough to factor into the playoff conversation. Similarly, I would expect Pittsburgh to underperform its projected 8.5 win total, leaving the Bengals and Ravens in a New Year’s Eve game that could essentially be a win-and-in scenario similar to the Ravens-Steelers matchup last year. Cincinnati was one of my most clearly improved teams this offseason, and I think its rotational pass rush will challenge a newly rebuilt Ravens offensive line. Plus, there is always the possibility that new Raven Trey Hendrickson punishes a team he has long harbored some resentment toward, given how his contract situation with the Bengals ended. Baltimore will be worth watching all season, having changed head coaches for the first time in nearly two decades, but this will be a crucial late-season test outlining how the experiment is going through 16 games.
More NFL From Sports Illustrated
- SI:AM | What to Know About the NFL Schedule
- Winners and Losers From the NFL’s 2026 Schedule Release Videos
- Chargers Poke Fun at Mike Vrabel-Dianna Russini Scandal In Schedule Release Video
- Tom Brady Finally Has a Good Excuse to Be Neutral About the Patriots
- Albert Breer Details How the NFL Built the 2026 Schedule
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Conor Orr’s Best 11 Games of the 2026 NFL Season.
