It’s become an event for NFL fans, waiting for the release of the NFL Schedule, and the 2026 version is  this week.  

Where is my team playing opening day?  How are our games packaged?  Where is our bye week?  How many road games in a row do we play?  Is the schedule stacked against us?  Do we get any breaks?

Those were the conversations for years.

Heck, as the Voice of the Chargers and the Seahawks, I would get amped to see who we played, where, and when and how it matched up with the Aztecs and USC games I would do on Saturday?

But now the landscape has changed.  

The NFL took teams to Japan.  Then to Europe.  Now to Australia and beyond.

The NFL schedule was all things on Sunday and then the mystical Monday Night matchups.  And Sunday Night football became a big event.

Wow, now look at the schedule.  Games on Thursday-no one likes.  Games on a Friday.  Holiday games wrapped around Thanksgiving.  Christmas Day games have grown.  Even one on a Wednesday.

And of course now the modern day question. Where do I find my team, on which network?  What do you mean behind a paywall?   Streaming.  Where do you find the games.  How much will it cost you to get access to the games.

The NFL media partners used to be the big three networks (CBS-NBC-ABC), then here came ESPN, then Fox,  but now the new partners include Netflix, Amazon Prime and more.

The landscape is really different.  Do the fans care?  Will there be a revolt over the cost of streaming?  Does anyone pay attention to the Trump criticism of Goodell?

Enjoy your schedule release.  Tell me if you feel different about what the NFL is doing with it’s business of TV.  You love the NFL.  It will cost you more to watch it.  Any problem with that?

And here, an essay from Front Office Sports about how the NFL-on-TV has changed.

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There has been a gradual erosion of the Sunday afternoon NFL slate—and thus, the beloved witching hour—that will continue this season when at least two games from there are moved into standalone windows.

Fox is adding three standalone windows this season: one game in Munich featuring the Lions, a Christmas game, and another late-season Saturday game. Two of these games come from the league’s slate of five games it picked up to resell in the NFL Network–ESPN transaction, and another is coming out of Fox’s Sunday afternoon inventory. CBS is also adding a late-season Saturday game that is getting rearranged from its own Sunday afternoon slate. 

Years ago, legendary former WFAN host Mike Francesa credited Brent Musburger for coining the phrase “witching hour” during their time working on CBS’s NFL Today studio show, where Musburger hosted and Francesa was behind the scenes. “So many of those games will turn and twist and turn and change,” Francesa said, referring to the window between 3 p.m. ET and the end of the early slate when “all hell was gonna break loose.” NFL Red Zone host Scott Hanson has adopted the phrase himself, announcing the witching hour every week.

For the past 20 years, the NFL has been chipping away at the depth of the Fox, CBS, and Sunday Ticket packages (previously sold by DirecTV, now by YouTube TV), with the addition of more standalone games derived from the afternoon slate. As a result, the witching hour’s inventory has been reduced.

While Fox and CBS are benefiting this time around from the schedule shift because they are adding their own extra NFL windows, they have collectively relinquished more than two dozen of these Sunday afternoon games over the course of the full season as the league has adapted its schedule. 

It began when the NFL added an eight-game Thursday Night Football package in 2006. The weekly showcase expanded to 13 games in 2012 and eventually to a full season in 2014. International games have also played a role in this trend. There will be nine this year, from locations including London, Munich, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, and Melbourne. There are also more holiday windows—a Christmas tripleheader, a third Thanksgiving game, a Thanksgiving Eve matchup—in addition to the aforementioned expanded late-season Saturday slate.

The inventory has to come from somewhere. While some of it has been resold out of packages that had already been carved out from Sunday afternoon, that’s ultimately where these new windows have been created over the span of two decades.

Sports Illustrated writer Jimmy Traina summed up the trade-off after news of the CBS rearrangement was announced Monday. “I’m torn. Sunday at 1pm has been destroyed, which isn’t fun when you pay 8 billion dollars for Sunday Ticket, but I love as many standalone prime time games as possible