The first month of the 2025 NFL season is in the books. It's been a fun start to the year. The defending champion Eagles have been unsteady but remain undefeated all the same. The Chiefs have been declared dead and also declared back several times. The Buccaneers are the most entertaining team in football. The Ravens are 1-3 and looking at a Lamar Jackson-less stretch. Josh Allen is still doing Josh Allen stuff. All in, the year has unfolded as expected in some ways and very much not as expected in others.
Week 5 seems likely to bring more chaos. It kicks off with a Rams-49ers rivalrly clash on Thursday Night Football; Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay always deliver high drama when they face off. Then Drake Maye and the Patriots will try to show their improvement is for real on Sunday Night Football against Allen's Bills. The bookend to the weekend's worth of games will come in the form of Patrick Mahomes on Monday Night Football taking the Chiefs to battle against a Jaguars team that has gotten off to a great start under rookie head coach Liam Coen.
In between those games comes plenty of Sunday action. It is the first week of byes so there will be two fewer games than in previous weeks but it's still a loaded slate.
Here's what the coverage map looks like for Week 5 of the NFL season.
What is the NFL Week 5 Coverage Map?
Coverage maps show exactly what games will be broadcast where around the country on Sunday.
Each week, every non-primetime game (in other words, the games that aren't played on Thursday Night Football, Sunday Night Football, or Monday Night Football) is broadcast on either CBS or Fox at 1 p.m. ET or around 4 p.m. ET. This means fans everywhere will have at least two games shown on their screens every Sunday afternoon during the season.
Every team playing will have its game broadcast in its local market no matter what (i.e. the Cincinnati Bengals will always be on in Cincinnati). But that still leaves another game to be broadcast, which is assigned by the network. And in the case that the local team is playing during primetime or is on a bye week, there will still be a game broadcast in the window they'd normally play.
Ergo, the coverage map shows that: what teams will be shown in what cities when the local team is not playing. Maps are all courtesy of 506sports.
CBS Single Game Window
Here's the coverage map for games being shown on CBS that kick off at 1 p.m. ET and 4:05 p.m. ET. Games kicking off at 4:05 p.m. ET are denoted as "LATE" on the key.
CBS Single Game Coverage Map Key
Fox Early Game Window
Here's the coverage map for games being shown on Fox that kick off at 1 p.m. ET.
Fox Early Game Coverage Map Key
Fox Late Game Window
Here's the coverage map for games being shown on Fox that kick off at 4:25 p.m. ET.
Fox Late Game Coverage Map Key
Key NFL Matchups in Week 5
The Los Angeles-San Francisco clash on TNF has the potential to be most impactful in the grand scheme of the season. The NFC West is often a very tight divisional race that can come down to tiebreakers. The Rams and Niners both figure to be fighting for the division crown and thus both sides really, really want this win to have in their back pocket going forward. There's a good chance no game will matter more this week than this when the season comes to a close.
Outside of that contest, the Buccaneers-Seahawks contest in Seattle should be a great one and wind up meaningful down the line. Both teams are 3-1 to start the year and could be jockeying for playoff positioning by the end of the year. More than anything this game promises to be fun. The Seahawks are good enough to hang with just about anybody but not quite good enough to run away with the game against quallity opponents, which means it should stay close throughout. Mayfield and Tampa Bay have already earned a reputation for this season's title of Comeback Kids with three last-second wins and one narrow loss to Philly. It wouldn't be a surprise if this was the best game of the week.
Finally, on Sunday morning across the pond the Vikings and Browns will play in a game that normally wouldn't move the needle; Minnesota is clearly trying to tread water until J.J. McCarthy comes back and Cleveland is not going to be competing for much of anything this year. But it became a lot more interesting on Wednesday when the Browns announced Dillon Gabriel would be starting in place of Joe Flacco. It's a tough draw to go up against Brian Flores in his first NFL start so it will be fascinating to see if Gabriel can make anything happen, and if not, how short of a leash he'll have before Kevin Stefanski turns back to Flacco or even (gulp) Shedeur Sanders.
It should be a fun week. Enjoy the games!
This article was originally published on www.si.com as NFL TV Coverage Map Week 5: Full Breakdown of CBS, Fox Broadcasts.
