NFL Schedule Release Day: Much Ado About Nothing

Most days, it is impossible to settle on just one thing about the NFL that is insufferable and overblown.

For better or for worse, today it's easy. Because today is schedule release day. And no I am not going to give it the proper name/holiday treatment by capitalizing the first letter of each word.

When Is NFL Schedule Release Day?

However, I know the value of good SEO, thus, the subhead question posed with the proper name/holiday treatment a la Homer Simpson in "The Joy of Sect."

When is the NFL schedule released?

Thursday, May 14.

I see. And what is Thursday, May 14?

It's NFL schedule release day.

I see. And what day is that?

It's Thursday, May 14.

And what happens that day?

The NFL schedule is released.

We laugh (or maybe only I'm laughing), but the NFL pretty much thinks we're as dense as Homer with the lead-up to schedule release day, all of which drills into our thick skulls that schedule release day is today while dispensing the schedule so that pretty much all the suspense is over by the time the quote unquote reveal actually begins tonight at 8 PM.

Adam Schefter, an NFL insider who can always be counted on to help out the shield, had 22 schedule-related Tweets between Monday and Wednesday, He's Tweeting the schedule like I Tweet a Hofstra men's basketball game! (Hey, I'm a lot of things, one of which is self-aware)

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But fine, Schefter is Schefter. In some weird bizarre way, he's driving traffic to the broadcast tonight. But there are already stories breaking down the schedule and who has the easiest and toughest 2026 slates. If we already know the schedule, why are we watching tonight?

And if the NFL wants us to watch tonight, why does it have a link at its OWN SITE examining what is already revealed - five key prime time games, including the FIRST-EVER Thanksgiving Eve game, as well as all nine international games?

Why Is The NFL Playing On Thanksgiving Eve?

Of course, the presence of a game on Thanksgiving Eve is even more evidence we didn't need a schedule reveal day to remind us of the NFL's never-ending hubris.

Has anyone's Thanksgiving Eve ever suffered because there was no football? There were 72 Division I college basketball games, 15 NHL games and nine NBA games last Thanksgiving Eve to go along with the other pre-holiday activities such as cooking, traveling and, if you're of a certain age, bar crawling with your high school buddies home from college for the long weekend.

There is not one person on this earth who has ever said wow, you know what tonight really needs? An NFL game on Netflix, especially now that Stranger Things is over. (That was also something else we could have done last Thanksgiving Eve, by the way)

But now you can watch the Green Bay Packers oppose the Los Angeles Rams while doing whatever it is you're going to be doing this Thanksgiving Eve. Let's hope both teams have their open date the week before. I'm sure the NFL wouldn't want to risk the health of its players and the quality of the product by cramming two games into four days, They just do that two games in five days on Thanksgiving week…and every other week between weeks two and 17, too.

NFL Schedule Release Day Was Actually 129 Days Ago

Here's the best/dumbest part about schedule release day: At the bottom of the aforementioned page is a link to each team's 2026 opponents - a slate everyone's known since 2025 regular season ended on Jan. 4!

The NFL schedule matrix is one of the few things the league has kept simple, though of course it brags about needing "…thousands of computers and a team of NFL executives" to come up with it. No. You and I could figure it out ourselves, because other than game no. 17 (another thing nobody asked for and the NFL gave us anyway), the entire schedule is based on where a team finished the previous season.

Tonight's reveal/all the drips and drabs are just about the actual dates, which is glorified eyewash. If you cared enough to know, you have known for months whom your favorite team was playing.

How Long Has the NFL Had A Schedule Release Day?

I don't know, but it didn't exist when I was a kid and I turned out just fine (your definition of fine may vary).

I found out who my favorite team (the Tampa Bay Buccaneers - long story) would play the next season by reading about it in the USA Today and then went back to doing my usual things, such as collecting baseball cards, not doing my homework and not talking to girls on the phone.

For fun, I dove into the Newsday archives at my local library and discovered the 1986 schedule was released on Apr. 2 - that's almost six weeks earlier than now! Peter King, the future Sports Illustrated and NBC insider, wrote a story about the Jets and Giants' schedules with quotes from head coaches Joe Walton and Bill Parcells as well as one quote from NFL director of broadcasting Val Pinchbeck. And that was it! We probably didn't think about the NFL again until training camp began.

Forty years later, the NFL has to make sure we don't spend a single day not thinking about the NFL. And to be fair (and deviate from my Abe Simpson impersonation), the Internet demands constant content - much of which will be generated in entertaining fashion by each NFL team's social media crew.

But I promise the NFL it can ease up on dragging out the schedule release day. We'll all be there when the games start. For all of them. No matter how many different platforms or on how many different nights of the week or how many different times on Sunday morning on which we have to watch.

"Basically the NFL likes to make something out of nothing," Los Angeles Chargers director of creative video David Bretto told USA Today.

Today more than ever.

Related: A Diary of The Worst NFL Games... Ever? My Day With The Jets And Giants

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This story was originally published May 15, 2026 at 5:03 PM.