NFL Thanksgiving 2024: Games, schedule, history, and everything else you need to know

Thanksgiving might be a bit late this year, but the NFL is still celebrating the holiday with a trio of NFL games that will help you avoid awkward political arguments or overcooked turkey.

It’s the third Thanksgiving since the death of Hall of Famer John Madden, who did as much as anyone to elevate the league’s holiday slate into a highly anticipated tradition. Madden called 20 Thanksgiving games during his time in the booth, and once again all three networks — CBS, Fox, and NBC — will highlight the iconic play caller during their broadcasts.

The NFL’s Thanksgiving Day games date back over 100 years, and for the second straight year play will extend to Black Friday (a phrase coined by Philly police officers), with Amazon’s Prime Video streaming a matchup between the Las Vegas Raiders and the Kansas City Chiefs beginning at 3 p.m. Philly time.

Here’s everything you need to know about this year’s Thanksgiving Day games, including how to watch and stream:

While the NFL has scheduled Thanksgiving games since its founding in 1920, the league’s annual Detroit tradition began in 1934. It was the Lions’ first year after being moved from Portsmouth, Ohio, (where they were called the Spartans) and they defeated the Chicago Bears, who had won the league’s championship the season before.

Since then, other than a six-year gap from 1939 to 1944 due to World War II, the NFL has featured a Thanksgiving Day game in Detroit every season.

Dallas began hosting Thanksgiving games in 1966. General manager Tex Schramm wanted more national publicity for the team, and though the NFL was nervous that attendance would be low, over 82,000 fans crammed into the Cotton Bowl to watch the Cowboys defeat the Cleveland Browns. Dallas has hosted a Thanksgiving Game ever since, missing just two seasons — 1975 and 1977, when then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle tried and failed to draw interest toward the St. Louis Cardinals.

The NFL added a third prime-time Thanksgiving Day game in 2006, which began on the NFL Network before moving over to NBC in 2012. Unlike the games hosted by Detroit and Dallas, the evening Turkey Day game features a different home team each season.

The Eagles have played seven times on Thanksgiving, most recently in 2015, when the Birds were blown out by the Lions in Chip Kelly’s final season as head coach.

Overall, the Eagles’ record on Thanksgiving is 6-1, the highest winning percentage (.857) among teams that played at least five games. That includes their Thanksgiving win in 1940 against the Pittsburgh Steelers, which was played on Nov. 28 despite President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision to move the holiday a week earlier in 1939 for economic reasons.

Dubbed “Franksgiving” by former Atlantic City Mayor Charles White, Roosevelt’s move was controversial, and many states chose to ignore it and continued to recognize Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of the month, which became official in late 1941.

Eagles-Cowboys is always an option for Thanksgiving, though the league is reluctant to schedule its top games on a day when they’re almost guaranteed to get 35 million to 40 million viewers. Which is why the two NFC East rivals have only faced off twice on Thanksgiving — in 1989 and 2014.

If the Eagles and Lions both end up winning their respective divisions, they’ll play next season. If the game ends up in Detroit, it could be an enticing option for Thanksgiving, according to Mike North, the NFL’s vice president of broadcast planning and scheduling.

The Jacksonville Jaguars remain the only NFL team to never play a Thanksgiving game.

There are multiple reasons for this, but mostly stem from the Jaguars being a historically mediocre AFC team that has only played a total of nine road games against the Lions and Cowboys in 30 seasons since entering the league in 1995.

On top of that complication, the NFL’s previous TV rules used to state the road team determined which games CBS and Fox received (the league’s new TV rights deal in 2022 did away with that). So any Jaguars-Lions or Jaguars-Cowboys game would have had to air on CBS, since Jacksonville was an AFC team.

Jacksonville’s most likely path to appearing on Thanksgiving would be in the prime-time game, which changes teams each season. But the small-market Jaguars just haven’t been relevant enough over the years to warrant a spot when the NFL can lean on popular AFC franchises like the New England Patriots, Pittsburgh Steelers, or Kansas City Chiefs.

“You are what your record says you are,” North said. “As their record gets back to what we’re used to seeing … and they’re a playoff team again, I suspect they will find themselves on Thanksgiving at some point.”

While the Jaguars are still waiting for their first Thanksgiving appearance, three NFL teams have only played once on the holiday — Carolina Panthers, Cincinnati Bengals, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

While the country may be rooting for the Detroit Lions (10-1) to keep up their nine-game winning streak, fans in and around Philadelphia will be rooting hard for the Chicago Bears (4-7).

The Lions are currently one game up on the Eagles (9-2) in the race for the NFC’s top playoff seed. In order to catch Detroit, the Birds need the Lions to lose at least one game, and most likely two, and they especially need the losses to be against NFC teams for potential tiebreaker purposes.

It’ll be a tough task for the Bears defense. Jared Goff leads the league’s second-best offense (No. 1 in scoring), and former Bears running back David Montgomery has a touchdown in each of the past three games.

It’s the 20th time the Bears and Lions have faced off on Thanksgiving, and Chicago has won three straight against Detroit, most recently in 2021. The Lions haven’t won on Thanksgiving since 2016.

It’s too bad the NFL can’t flex out of bad games on Thanksgiving.

The New York Giants (2-9) are on the verge of being the first team in the league eliminated from the playoffs. They released starting quarterback Daniel Jones last week and put up just 245 yards of total offense with Tommy DeVito under center. Members of the team used an array of colorful words to describe their performance during their Week 12 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers

On the other side of the field is the Dallas Cowboys (4-7), who are hoping for a late-season turnaround after upsetting the Washington Commanders last week. But that seems like a long shot, especially with quarterback Dak Prescott out for the rest of the season with a hamstring injury. The Cowboys have a 1% chance to advance to the postseason, according to the New York Times’ playoff simulator, and “America’s team” is so bad the NFL is seriously considering flexing them out of prime time in Week 16.

But it’s the Cowboys on Thanksgiving, meaning upwards of 40 million viewers will tune in and watch two bad teams play football. It almost makes you feel bad for Tom Brady, in his first year calling NFL games for Fox. Almost.

The best matchup of the day features Jordan Love and the Green Pay Packers (8-3) hosting Tua Tagovailoa and the surging Miami Dolphins (5-6), winners of three straight games.

It’s the Dolphins’ eighth Thanksgiving game, and their first since 2011, when they lost narrowly to the Cowboys in a game that featured three lead changes in the fourth quarter. But to keep their playoff hopes alive they’ll have to beat the Packers at Lambeau Field, were Miami hasn’t won a game since 2010.

It’s just the second time this century the Packers have played at home on Thanksgiving — the first was in 2015, which they lost to the Bears.

The Packers need a win to keep pace in the NFC North, where their eight wins are only good enough for third place behind the Lions (10-1) and Minnesota Vikings (9-2).

All three games will stream on their network’s respective subscription streaming services — Paramount+ for CBS and Peacock for NBC. Fox’s Thanksgiving game will stream on its website and on the Fox Sports app, but a cable subscription is required.

The games also will stream on any so-called skinny bundle that carries the three broadcast networks, including fuboTV, YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV, and DirecTV Stream. Most offer a free trial.

If you live in the Philadelphia TV market, you can stream all three games on NFL+, the league’s subscription streaming service, which runs $6.99 a month.

If you’re looking to stream the games for free and you live in or around Philadelphia, your best option is using a digital antenna, since all three will air on broadcast television.