NFL schedule release day seems like a national holiday for football fans. They just can’t wait to see how creative, or how lame their teams and others around the league will share the upcoming season’s schedule. This year didn’t disappoint, overall. I say that because some teams did disappoint. That team likes to disappoint with their on-field play as well, but I won’t give it away just yet.
Without further ado, here are the winners and losers of NFL schedule release day.
Winners
Los Angeles Rams
At first, I thought it was going to be lame. It didn’t hook me from the start, coming across as low effort with the ASMR food presentation, but they delivered.
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From poking fun at the Washington Commanders changing their name from the Redskins, to the conspiracy that the San Francisco 49ers power station near their practice facility was causing injury to the players via electromagnetic field emissions, to trolling the Democrat mayor of Philadelphia butchering the spelling of Eagles, it was a chef’s kiss. Pun intended.
Oh, and they have a humorous “Napoleon Dynamite” reference at the very end with their mascot. Another nice touch.
Atlanta Falcons
The Dirty Birds put together a compilation of “This is SportsCenter”-style commercials to share their season’s schedule. The new President of Football Operations and Falcons’ legend, Matt Ryan recreated his infamous “GET F****** SET!” call, but this time in an office setting. The release included many of the Falcons starters, including Bijan Robinson and Drake London. They poked fun at how to pronounce Bijan and London met a co-worker named Kendrick, alluding to the Kendrick vs. Drake rap beef. Members of St. André Golf, a prominent Atlanta-based comedy trio, Aaron Chewning, Hannah Rae Aslesen and Jonathan Pawlowsk, were also featured.
To get all of your star players to participate, and your new coach to play a role too, is no easy task. Well done, Atlanta.
Las Vegas Raiders
Speaking of using star players, well, let’s just say star player (No offense Kirk). Raiders quarterbacks Kirk Cousins, who was signed in the offseason after his release from Atlanta, teamed up with the #1 overall pick in this year’s draft, former Indiana Hoosier and national champion, Fernando Mendoza, to parody John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell’s comedy, Step Brothers.
The video starts by recreating the classic nicknames stand-off scene from the movie, but instead of “Nighthawk” and “Dragon”, Mendoza tells Cousins to call him “The Mendolorian”, a reference to Star Wars’ show The Mandalorian, and Cousins telling Mendoza to call him “Kirko Chains.” It’s hysterically poor acting, that’ll give you a Napolean Dynamite feel at times, and the tucked-in shirts are a funny touch.
Cousins in a tucked-in Yoda shirt was comical, and the two measuring the size of their hands was a witty PG version of the movie’s antics.
Now fans hope the team’s play on the field will be as good as this video. If it’s anything remotely close, the season will be a success.
Los Angeles Chargers
The Rams awarded the Chargers a “Certificate of Achievement” for “Best Schedule Release Video” and I couldn’t agree more. My inner child was loving the Halo-themed release that was littered with Easter eggs trolling their opponents.
One of the characters throws a sticky bomb at a Broncos-themed character, referencing Bo Nix’s injury last season. They poke fun at Texans QB C.J. Stroud giving Bears QB Caleb Williams advice after their primetime showdown in 2024. Diana Russini and Mike Vrabel’s affair is referenced with “1 Hour Until Next Photo Dump” with a “message” from the New York Post. They gave the Chiefs character “zebra armor” so it looked like a ref. The Rams were mentioned with a Colorado Avalanche logo making fun of their GM wearing an Avalanche jersey in the NFL Draft room.
It was so well presented with countless references to viral moments and gaffes. There’s a reason the video has more than 16 million views in 22 hours since it was posted.
A+ Chargers. A+.
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Tennessee Titans
The Titans’ went will the man of the street approach again and it paid off big time.
Tennessee’s social media team went up and down Broadway, and the surrounding area in downtown Nashville to find lookalikes of key figures of their 2026 opponents.
From Will Compton, to Dominico “Big Dom” DiSandro, the chief security officer of the Philadelphia Eagles, to some random white dude in a Myles Garrett jersey who looked nothing like Garrett, it was another cheesy, extremely low-budget video that is easily in my top 3 of best schedule releases.
Losers
Arizona Cardinals
I’ll keep this brief. The Arizona Cardinals put together a Zoom call with what looks like the AI-version of the mascots of all of their opponents, led by an AI Muppet-like figure presented as the “Director of Mascot Match-ups.”
This was hilariously bad. The sound drops off in a way that isn’t properly explained and it sounds like a voiceover you’d hear after recording a voice memo on your phone.
This may be worst schedule release I’ve ever seen. Incredibly forgettable and hard to get through.
New York Jets
This video is arguably not as bad as Aaron Rodgers’ Achilles tendon rupturing in the first quarter of his first start in a Jets uniform, but it’s close.
The team went arts and crafts in this year’s release, and I went to bed. This would be an entertaining video to show up on your doom scroll late at night, seeing how paint colors can be mixed and matched to present the color of your opponent, but two and a half minutes of this? Come on. Give your fans something to get excited about.
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Not a single word was spoken in this video, but it screamed, “BORING!” to me.
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It’s fitting that two of the worst teams in the league would present schedule releases like this.
Overall, the league’s social media teams do a solid job. It’s fun to look for the subtle and not-so-subtle digs at each other and spend a few hours checking each team’s page to see what they cooked up. It got me fired up for the season, as it did for you as well, I’m sure.
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