The NFL announced the matchups for its first Thanksgiving Eve game and all three Thanksgiving games ahead of Thursday night’s schedule reveal, so the only thing left to announce for the three-day holiday spread of games was the Black Friday matchup.
That game will feature the Broncos visiting the Steelers in a game that will start at 3 p.m. ET. The game will be broadcast on Amazon Prime Video.
It will be the first time that either franchise has played a Black Friday game. The NFL first held a game on the day after Thanksgiving in 2023 and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has said that the league is considering ways to add a second game.
That is what they’ve done with the Thanksgiving Eve game. It will involve the Packers visiting the Rams on Wednesday night in a game broadcast by Netflix.
Thanksgiving’s schedule will start in Detroit as usual. The Lions will host the Bears at 1 p.m. ET on CBS and the Eagles will visit the Cowboys on Fox at 4:30 p.m. ET. Thursday’s action will conclude with the Chiefs in Buffalo to face the Bills at 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC.
The Packers have all of their 2026 draft picks under contract.
Second-round cornerback Brandon Cisse became the final member of the group to sign his four-year rookie deal on Thursday. The Packers selected six players in the draft overall.
Cisse had 27 tackles, an interception, 1.5 tackles for loss and a forced fumble while at South Carolina last year. He spent his first two college years at N.C. State.
The Packers also announced their previously reported waiver claim of wide receiver Brenden Rice. The NFL’s transaction report shows that they made space for him on the roster by waiving tight end Luke Lachey with a failed physical designation. The Packers claimed Lachey on waivers earlier this week.
The Dolphins are bringing in a player who’s familiar with their new General Manager and head coach.
Miami has claimed defensive tackle James Ester off of waivers, according to the league’s daily transaction wire.
Ester, who entered the league as an undrafted free agent in 2024, has spent the last two seasons on the Packers’ practice squad. He was waived by the club earlier this week.
Dolphins G.M. Jon-Eric Sullivan and head coach Jeff Hafley were both previously with the Packers, giving them some inside knowledge about Ester.
Ester, however, has not yet appeared in a regular-season game.
Last month, Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) introduced legislation aimed at ensuring free, over-the-air access by citizens of a given state to all nationally-televised games involving the teams headquartered there. Naturally, then, she was dismayed to learn that the Packers-Rams game on Thanksgiving Eve will be streamed exclusively by Netflix.
“As the cost of just about everything continues to rise, the NFL is once again asking Wisconsinites to spend their hard-earned money on another streaming service,” Baldwin said. “Enough is enough. My ‘For the Fans Act’ would stop this exact scenario and prevent Wisconsin families from being forced to pay for Netflix just to watch the Packers play this Thanksgiving.”
The development comes at a time when the NFL is facing unprecedented political pressure, on multiple fronts. The Department of Justice is investigating whether the NFL has exceeded its current broadcast antitrust exemption. Fox owner Rupert Murdoch, through the op-ed pages of his Wall Street Journal and the back channels of government, has pushed the question of whether the existing exemption should be scrapped.
In Wisconsin, the Packers-Rams game to be played the night before Thanksgiving will be televised by network affiliates in Green Bay and Milwaukee. The rest of WI will be SOL, absent a Netflix subscription. That same dynamic will apply to any Packers games on Prime Video.
Whether the For the Fans Act goes anywhere remains to be seen. Regardless, the complaints about requiring fans to pay to watch standalone NFL games is here to stay, until further notice.
Packers General Manager Brian Gutekunst said earlier this month that the team expects edge rusher Micah Parsons to return early in the 2026 season after recovering from a torn ACL, but did not put any more specific time frame on how much time Parsons could miss.
A report on Thursday does a little more on that front. Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that Parsons is a candidate to open the season on the physically unable to perform list.
If that’s the case, Parsons will not be able to play in the first four weeks of the regular season. He would be able to return to practice during that window, which would be important because remaining on the PUP list into the regular season would mean Parsons was not participating in training camp practices.
A clearer sense of when Parsons will be available will come well before Week 1 and the Packers will find out which games Parsons might miss when the NFL schedule is released on Thursday night.
