In the final week of March, the NFL made the stunning decision to play games on Christmas Day in 2024, despite the holiday falling a day the league traditionally does not play games on. Two games will be played on Christmas Wednesday, and the four teams that will play out those games will play the previous Saturday so that there is a period of build-up time similar to a Sunday turnaround to Thursday Night Football.
Christmas Day games have been ratings juggernauts, and 2023’s were arguably the most successful run of Christmas games the league has seen, even causing damage to the NBA’s ratings for their longstanding tradition of playing five games on the holiday. The three games brought in a total viewership of over 30 million.
The NFL Schedule will likely not be released before early May. Regardless, despite this unconventional plan to keep the ratings train going for 2024, the NFL will not seek to add a Tuesday game to Week 16 of next season.
The NFL Will Not Play a Christmas Eve Game in 2024
The Sunday of Week 16 of the 2024 NFL Season will fall on Sunday, December 22nd. It is likely that there will be a Thursday Night contest that week to accompany the normal slate, plus potential games on Saturday and the standard Monday Night contest. However, the NFL will not pair up the two Christmas Day games with a game on Tuesday, December 24th.
Christmas Eve was a Sunday in 2023, and the Patriots-Broncos nightcap only pulled in approximately 10.4 million viewers. This was another decline from the Steelers-Raiders nightcap of Christmas Eve 2022, where 10.9 million viewers tuned in to watch the Steelers defeat the Raiders 13-10 mere days after the passing of Steelers legend and Hall-of-Famer Franco Harris.
NFL Schedule Rumors Continued This Week
We have known for quite some time that the Philadelphia Eagles will play in Brazil on the opening Friday of the 2024 NFL Season. This week, their opponent may have been all but confirmed to be the Green Bay Packers. Despite long-running rumors that the Browns would be making the trip to Brazil to meet Philadelphia, we may soon see the confirmation that it will be the Packers taking on the Eagles in Sao Paulo.
Independent of the Christmas game and Brazil scheduling rumors, the 2024 NFL Season will feature plenty of other high-interest matchups that the league will have to sort out in time for the anticipated early May release window of the schedule.
Other 2024 NFL Schedule Matchups of Note
Leading the way will be a Super Bowl LVIII rematch that will be held in San Francisco between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers. The Chiefs lost the most recent Super Bowl rematch, which was held in Week 11 of last season.
Other matchups of interest once the NFL schedule is released will include yet another matchup of Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson and the Ravens heading to Kansas City for an AFC Championship rematch, and Matthew Stafford’s second return to Detroit to face his former team in the Lions.
The Schedule Shuffling Will Only Continue
The annual schedule continues to expand and change in ways few may have ever predicted since the announcement of the 17th game to the schedule. Several international games remain in place for 2024, with the Jacksonville Jaguars continuing their annual tradition of playing in London. The Carolina Panthers will venture out to Munich, Germany, while the Bears and Vikings will join the Jaguars in London.
The 2024 schedule is expected to be released in early May. The next time the NFL will have to contend with potential Tuesday Christmas games will be in 2029.
Who knows how different the schedule could be by then?