All Holidays Are NFL Football Days Now

The NFL’s big announcement related to Holiday football came all wrapped in a Christmas present from the good folks over at Netflix when they agreed to exclusively stream NFL football games on Christmas day for the next three years.

Netflix is reportedly paying $150 million to carry both games this year: can you imagine walking into your boss's office and saying we have a deal with the NFL for two games on Christmas? Your boss would be so excited until he learned you paid $75 million per game for 3 hours of football.

No word yet, if Santa will be making an appearance at halftime of any of the games, but for the NFL, Netflix becomes yet another one of its media partners. When you think about the business side of the NFL, this is yet another in a long line of brilliant media partnerships that the NFL has worked out over the past ten years.

To put the NFL’s newfound obsession with holiday dominance in perspective, they now have one game on Halloween, three on Thanksgiving, one on Black Friday, and two on Christmas, which will be broadcast across various traditional TV networks and media streaming platforms.

Let’s start with this year's Halloween game between the Texans and the Jets. Assuming Aaron Rodgers is healthy, didn’t change his mind about running for office, and is playing the way he did two years ago, the Jets' matchup against C.J. Stroud should have some relevance in the AFC playoff picture. 

Onto Turkey Day, and the NFL is giving us not one, not two, but three NFL games. The first is the traditional Detroit Lions home game, and it appears the NFL scriptwriters believe Caleb Williams is the real deal. The Bears quarterback gets to play against another number one overall draft pick, Jared Goff, who will make an average of $53 million a year going forward.

The second Thanksgiving matchup is classic: the Giants vs. Cowboys, which will most likely have all of America wondering why Daniel Jones is still the Giants' starting quarterback. You can also expect that by Thanksgiving, head coach Mike McCarthy will have thrown out 90% of the Cowboys' running plays, so expect Dak to throw the ball at least 40 times.

The Turkey Day nightcap features a cheetah and what the NFL calls the fastest team in football vs. Jordan Love’s ball-control Green Bay Packers. Thanksgiving in Miami, yes, please, and thank you, Roger Goodell. You can expect very little defense to be played in this one. 

I love how the NFL scriptwriters give us the silver and black on Black Friday this year. The Raiders head to Kansas City, and since it's holiday season, anything is possible, like last year, when, for some strange, bizarre reason, The Raiders actually beat the Chiefs on Christmas. Whether you should go shopping or stay home and watch this game, I vote to stay home and watch the game and do my shopping the new, old-fashioned way: on the Internet.

Finally, we have the two Christmas Day games that Netflix will stream between you opening presents and politely asking your crazy uncle Frank and his 4th wife Edith to leave your house. Ravens at Texans and Chiefs at Steelers should be intriguing because all four teams should be in the playoff picture this year. I know the Steelers still don’t have a long-term answer to their quarterback problem, but this is Mike Tomlin we are talking about. I expect even the Steelers to still be sniffing the playoffs when Santa completes his package delivery service in Hawaii.