18 weeks. 32 teams. 272 games. And that’s not counting the playoffs. Are you ready for some football? We are. Whether you’re tuning in via your cable provider, a streaming service, or combination of the two, we’ve got the best seat in the house. Here are all the ways to watch the NFL this season.
NFL games on Thanksgiving and Black Friday
As is tradition, fans get hours of football action with three NFL games on Thanksgiving Day. And for the first time ever, NFL is adding a game on Black Friday, kicking off a new post-Thanksgiving tradition. Here’s the schedule for Thanksgiving and Black Friday NFL games:
- Thanksgiving Games
- Chicago Bears vs. Detroit Lions – 12:30 p.m. EST on CBS
- New York Giants vs. Dallas Cowboys – 4:30 p.m. EST on Fox
- Miami Dolphins vs. Green Bay Packers – 8:20 p.m. EST on NBC
- Black Friday Game
- Las Vegas Raiders vs Kansas City Chiefs – 3:00 p.m. EST on Prime Video
How to watch the NFL on cable TV
You can tune in to full NFL games live on these six cable networks: CBS, FOX, NBC, ABC, ESPN, and the NFL Network. Depending on where you live, only some games will be available on local stations. Here is what each of these networks offers:
- NBC: Every Sunday Night Football game
- ESPN/ABC/ESPN2/ESPN Deportes: Monday Night Football on ESPN and ESPN Deportes, plus select primary telecasts on ABC. Alternate broadcasts for designated games will be on ESPN2 (ManningCast)
- CBS: Local games on Sunday afternoons
- FOX: Local games on Sunday afternoons
- NFL Network: International games (weeks 5, 6, 7, and 10) as well as special Saturday games on Saturday, December 28 (matchups TBA).
- NFL RedZone: Seven commercial-free hours of football on Sunday afternoons, featuring every touchdown from every game in a whip-around format.
If you’re an Xfinity X1 customer, you can upgrade to the More Sports and Entertainment Package to get access to NFL RedZone, NFL Network, as well as the BIG Ten Network for college football, and more.
What is NFL RedZone?
NFL RedZone is the official subscription channel of the NFL airing every Sunday afternoon throughout the regular season. Scott Hanson takes you through every touchdown from every single game each Sunday afternoon. Via a signature whip-around format, the show drops you into key drives, big plays, and crucial moments, but does not broadcast full games.
Since some of these highlights happen at the same time, NFL RedZone gives you split-screen, triple-box, quad-box, and all the way up to octo-box (eight separate games at once) so you can see every time a team takes it to the end zone. You can watch NFL RedZone through Xfinity X1 cable when you add on the More Sports and Entertainment Package.
What is NFL Network?
NFL Network offers 24/7, 365 NFL coverage. It airs Preseason games, and exclusive live international games on weeks 5, 6, 7, and 10 as well as three Saturday games on week 17 (December 28). You can live stream the NFL Network through NFL+ and NFL+ Premium, or watch live through Xfinity X1 when you have the Xfinity More Sports and Entertainment Package.
How to stream NFL games
You can watch every Sunday Night Football game all season from the kickoff to the playoffs, as well as some preseason games, on Peacock. If you have access to NBC via your cable provider, you can watch Sunday Night Football on the NBC Sports app, NBC app, or via NBCSports.com. If you don't have access to NBC through your cable provider, you can stream Sunday Night Football on Peacock.
Other ways to watch
With YouTubeTV, you can stream your local football team games. For an additional cost, you can add NFL Sunday Ticket to watch out-of-market regular season games. As its name suggests, you can only watch regional games featuring teams outside your local market.
NFL+ is another way to stream all local, primetime games live on your phone or mobile device. But you cannot watch these games on your TV. If you try to use a screencaster to put the game from your phone on to your TV, NFL+ has special software to block you from doing that. With NFL+ Premium, you get NFL RedZone as well as replays of prior games.
Amazon Prime offers Thursday night games, excluding Thanksgiving Day. It will also offer a special playoff game to be determined. These games are exclusive to Prime Video unless you live in the local market of the participating teams.
Netflix will have two games: the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Houston Texans. These games are exclusive to Netflix unless you live in the local market of the participating teams.
Paramount+ allows you to live stream all CBS games in your local market.
Hulu+ Live TV offers streamers the chance to catch almost every game on NBC, CBS, FOX, ESPN, and the NFL Network. They also give the option to add NFL RedZone and other sports channels at additional cost.
NFL Sunday Ticket, Thursday Night Football on Prime, and the Christmas games on Netflix can all be accessed by Xfinity X1 customers via third-party app integrations. All you need is a subscription to these apps and you can access these games and packages via X1.
