As Netflix expands its NFL footprint to include a full five toes of NFL games in 2026, it’s hoping to enhance its desire to “eventize” football with some normalcy.
Elle Duncan of Netflix tells the Sports Media Watch podcast that the studio show for the games will have the same people involved.
“We’re not doing an 18-game slate,” Duncan said, via Derek Futterman of Sports Media Watch. “We want every single one of our events to, yes, have a through-line and some consistency, and you’ll get that with the desk and the talent, but, ‘How are we making each one of those things feel special and different and honor where we’re doing it at?’”
Netflix will stream the Week 1 game from Australia between the 49ers and Rams, the Thanksgiving Eve game between the Packers and Rams in L.A., two Christmas games (Packers-Bears and Bills-Broncos), and a Saturday afternoon game to launch Week 18.
Officially, Netflix doesn’t aspire to have a full, season-long NFL broadcast package. However, with its current arrangement in place through 2029, Netflix could eventually decide to make a bid on one of the various weekly windows.
Packers Clips
The Packers lost four consecutive games to close out the regular season. They then blew an 18-point halftime lead — and a 27-16 lead with 6 minutes left — to lose to the Bears 31-27.
The Packers are using the collapse(s) as motivation heading into 2026, receiver Christian Watson told NFL Media on Tuesday.
“It’s definitely fueling us, 100 percent,” Watson told Patrick Claybon and Judy Battista. “Obviously, we’d like to move on from those things, but it’s hard to move on from the reason behind losing those games.”
A few years ago, the Cowboys’ season motto after a similar collapse the previous season was “Finish.” That is the Packers’ mindset for 2026.
Clean it up and close it out.
“I think it really comes down to just not being able to finish in crucial moments, in crucial games, just not being able to finish,” Watson said. “That’s been a huge staple for us in terms of our mindset throughout this offseason of just consistently finishing. Finishing everything. Finishing every drill, every practice, every play.
“We’ve got to be able to build on that and carry that into this training camp and start the season that way so we can finish it that way. I think ‘finish’ is a big emphasis for us this year.”
The offseason programs around the league have largely wrapped up for 2026, with players and coaches around the league now experiencing some time off.
But training camps are just a few weeks away from opening.
The NFL announced the camp report dates for all 32 teams on Monday, with the first ones opening up in less than a month.
Below are the camp locations and report dates:
Arizona Cardinals: State Farm Stadium | Rookies: 7/22 | Veterans 7/22
Atlanta Falcons: Atlanta Falcons Training Facility | Rookies: 7/24 | Veterans: 7/28
Baltimore Ravens: Under Armour Performance Center | Rookies: 7/24 | Veterans: 7/28
Buffalo Bills: St. John Fisher University | Rookies: 7/21 | Veterans: 7/28
Carolina Panthers: Bank of America Stadium | Rookies: 7/21 | Veterans: 7/22
Chicago Bears: Halas Hall | Rookies: 7/25 | Veterans: 7/28
Cincinnati Bengals: Paycor Stadium | Rookies: 7/25 | Veterans: 7/28
Cleveland Browns: CrossCountry Mortgage Campus | Rookies: 7/23 | Veterans: 7/28
Dallas Cowboys: Marriott Residence Inn Oxnard | Rookies: 7/28 | Veterans: 7/28
Denver Broncos: Broncos Park Powered by CommonSpirit | Rookies: 7/22 | Veterans: 7/28
Detroit Lions: Meijer Performance Center | Rookies: 7/25 | Veterans: 7/28
Green Bay Packers: Lambeau Field | Rookies: 7/27 | Veterans: 7/28
Houston Texans: Houston Methodist Training Center | Rookies: 7/21 | Veterans: 7/28
Indianapolis Colts: Grand Park | Rookies: 7/27 | Veterans: 7/28
Jacksonville Jaguars: Miller Electric Center | Rookies: 7/25 | Veterans: 7/28
Kansas City Chiefs: Missouri Western State University | Rookies: 7/28 | Veterans: 7/28
Las Vegas Raiders: Intermountain Health Performance Center | Rookies: 7/23 | Veterans: 7/28
Los Angeles Chargers: The Bolt | Rookies: 7/23 | Veterans: 7/28
Los Angeles Rams: Loyola Marymount University | Rookies: 7/25 | Veterans: 7/25
Miami Dolphins: Baptist Health Training Complex | Rookies: 7/21 | Veterans: 7/28
Minnesota Vikings: TCO Performance Center | Rookies: 7/26 | Veterans: 7/28
New England Patriots: New Balance Athletics Center | Rookies: 7/21 | Veterans: 7/24
New Orleans Saints: Ochsner Sports Performance Center | Rookies: 7/28 | Veterans: 7/28
New York Giants: Quest Diagnostics Training Center/The Greenbrier | Rookies: 7/23 | Veterans: 7/28
New York Jets: Athletic Health Jets Training Center | Rookies: 7/25 | Veterans: 7/28
Philadelphia Eagles: Jefferson Health Training Complex | Rookies: 7/28 | Veterans: 7/28
Pittsburgh Steelers: Saint Vincent College | Rookies: 7/28 | Veterans: 7/28
San Francisco 49ers: SAP Performance Facility | Rookies: 7/18 | Veterans: 7/25
Seattle Seahawks: Virginia Mason Athletic Center | Rookies: 7/17 | Veterans: 7/24
Tampa Bay Buccaneers: AdventHealth Training Center | Rookies: 7/27 | Veterans: 7/28
Tennessee Titans: Vanderbilt Health Football Center | Rookies: 7/23 | Veterans: 7/28
Washington Commanders: Commanders Park | Rookies: 7/24 | Veterans: 7/28
The NFL has announced the full list of joint practices that will take place during training camps this summer.
The first set of them will take place on August 11 in four different locations. The Cowboys and Rams will practice in Los Angeles, the Colts will visit the Patriots, the Bucs will work out at the Jets’ facility and the Titans will go to Santa Clara to practice with the 49ers.
All in all, there will be 28 teams working in joint sessions in August. The Lions, Steelers, Chiefs and Broncos are the teams that will not hold joint practices.
The full list of joint practices is below with the host team listed second. If there are multiple practices scheduled, the date of the first practice is listed.
August 11 — Cowboys-Rams; Colts-Patriots; Buccaneers-Jets; Titans-49ers.
August 12 — Dolphins-Commanders.
August 13 — Jaguars-Saints.
August 18 — 49ers-Chargers; Raiders-Texans; Saints-Cowboys.
August 19 — Falcons-Colts; Ravens-Vikings; Panthers-Jaguars; Eagles-Patriots.
August 20 — Bills-Browns; Bears-Bengals; Saints-Rams; Giants-Dolphins.
August 21 — Seahawks-Titans.
August 25 — Buccaneers-Jaguars.
August 26 — Cardinals-Packers; Texans-Panthers; Commanders-Ravens.
August 27 — Bears-Titans.
Alex Freeman has become one of the breakout stars for the U.S. in the World Cup, with an assist in the first game against Paraguay and a goal against Australia.
His connection to former NFL standout receiver Antonio Freeman would have been more obvious, if Alex had been named “Antonio Jr.”
As explained by Rick Maese of the Washington Post, Antonio didn’t want to put extra pressure on his son.
The pressure has found Alex anyway, thanks to his achievements on the pitch. And he’s still only 21.
“It was kind of good to be able to make my own path, make my own future and kind of my own person,” Alex Freeman said.
Alex sees the positives in having a father who competed at the highest level of sport.
“I think, for me, it just shows how great the family tree is,” Alex Freeman said. “He can be great, but I can be great in my own way as well. And I think it just shows how amazing it is to have a dad who’s successful and that can mentor me to be able to be ready for moments like these.”
Friday’s moment came in the same city where Antonio caught a pair of touchdown passes in a 31-10 win over the Seahawks, during Green Bay’s championship season of 1996. (Here’s one of them.)
“Before it was, ‘Hey, it’s Antonio Freeman, congratulations on a great career,’” Antonio Freeman told Maese. “And now it’s, ‘Hey, congratulations to your son.’ So that’s a good transition. And it’s healthy, and man, I love it.”
Would it still be happening if Alex were Antonio Jr.? It’s irrelevant at this point, because Alex Freeman is doing a great job of making his own name one to remember.
“He did what?”
Alex Freeman, the 21-year-old son of former NFL receiver Antonio Freeman, has scored a goal in the first half of Friday’s match between the United States and Australia.
The goal initially was wiped out by an offside ruling. The decision was overturned on replay review.
Alex Freeman now has three goals in international play. He had an assist in last Friday’s 4-1 U.S. win over Paraguay. He plays professional for Villarel in La Liga.
Antonio Freeman spent nine seasons in the NFL, eight of them with the Packers. He was a member of the Super Bowl XXXI-winning team, and he provided one of the all-time great Monday night highlights with a bouncing-ball catch and run for a score in overtime against the Vikings during the 2000 season.
The Packers have announced dates for their 2026 training camp.
The team’s first practice will be held on July 29 and it will be open to the public. That will also be the case for practices on July 30 and 31 and the team will hold 10 more open sessions in August.
Those practices will be held on August 2-4, August 7, August 10-11, August 16, August 18, August 24, and August 26. The August 7 practice will be a family night practice at Lambeau Field.
Practice on August 26 will be a joint session with the Cardinals before the team’s third preseason game two nights later. The Packers will also be on the road to face the Steelers and Broncos during the preseason.
One way to deal with political pressure is to ignore it and hope it goes away. Another way is to meet it head-on.
The NFL, which for the most part has tiptoed around the multi-platform assault on the broadcast antitrust exemption embedded in the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, has come out swinging — with the franchise that can best be propped up as the poster child for the status quo.
Via Rob Demovsky of ESPN (which is now partially owned by the Packers and the rest of the NFL), the Packers have issued a statement pushing back on potential changes to the SBA. And Wisconsin Representative Scott Fitzgerald, who is on the committee studying the SBA and who recently dismissed the team’s concerns about the antitrust exemption, has become the target of Green Bay’s ire.
“Packers fans everywhere should be deeply concerned that Rep. Fitzgerald admitted to giving ‘zero’ consideration to keeping the Packers in Green Bay as he explores upending the 65-year-old Sports Broadcasting Act,” the Packers said. “Fans should be offended that Fitzgerald then went further, saying our concerns were ‘laughable.’ What is laughable is that a congressman from Wisconsin is leading this charge. Why threaten the team his community overwhelmingly cherishes and its ability to compete on a level playing field?
“The tremendously successful model of pooling media rights and sharing revenue equally amongst teams has allowed the Packers to survive and thrive in the smallest media market in professional sports. This model is as foundational to the Packers’ existence as the very bricks in Lambeau Field. It is careless and unwise to rearrange the bricks of a foundation which has stood strong for over half a century.”
Demovsky’s article contains other talking points regarding the Packers’ struggle to compete with other NFL teams in the current climate. He points out that the Packers don’t have a deep-pocketed owner. (Of course, that’s because the Packers decided to embrace a non-stock stock structure decades ago, making it impossible for any one person to ever acquire ownership of the team.) Demovsky also mentions that the Packers can’t sell a piece of the team to private-equity funds. (Same reason.)
The concern is that, because the Packers are in the NFL’s smallest market, a requirement to sell TV rights individually would put the Packers at a disadvantage. But the Packers are a popular national brand. If the broadcast antitrust exemption were to disappear altogether (and it most likely won’t), every team would have to sell the rights to its home games.
Despite the size of the market, the Packers would be a very valuable property for a national TV deal. It’s Lambeau Field. The Frozen Tundra. It’s a bedrock franchise with a strong national following.
If the current socialized structure for NFL TV money suddenly flipped to a model that more closely mirrors true American capitalism, the Packers would land far closer to the Cowboys than the Jaguars when it comes to the annual cash value of Green Bay’s coast-to-coast TV viewership.
Would losing the broadcast antitrust exemption create chaos for the NFL? Yes, it would. But the Packers would likely do better than plenty of other teams under an every-franchise-for-itself model.
The broader question is whether the Packers devised their recent strategy to fight for the antitrust exemption on their own, or whether this is the latest effort by the NFL to fend off a Fox-driven political push in response to the NFL’s effort to get the broadcast networks to pay a lot more for settled TV deals through 2029. With the league’s “87-percent” talking point having significant flaws, which were exposed during last week’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, the NFL needed to come up with another P.R. plan.
The Packers first touched on the issue last week, in a mailbag column posted the day before the hearing. With Congress reportedly cobbling some sort of legislation together, the Packers have now made a more overt gesture.
We live in an age where the justification for anything someone wants is to claim that, if they don’t get it, they’ll face an existential threat. That’s essentially what the Packers (and the NFL) are now doing.
If the SBA goes away, the Packers won’t survive.
But Fitzgerald isn’t advocating for the antitrust exemption to be scrapped. In the interview to which the Packers are objecting, Fitzgerald simply uses the word “tweaked.”
For now, here’s the basic reality. Congress is taking a close look at the SBA, changes to it could be made, and the NFL (via the Packers) is trying its best to keep any changes to the SBA, “tweaking” or otherwise, from happening.
Packers head coach Matt LaFleur thinks Green Bay may get an immediate impact on its offensive line from rookie fifth-round draft pick Jager Burton.
Burton was working with the first-string offensive line during minicamp, at both left guard and right guard, and LaFleur said Burton appears to be ready to play at the NFL level.
“I see a really young guy that’s extremely coachable, athletic, and is maximizing the most of his opportunities,” LaFleur said, via ESPN. “So I think every practice he gets a little bit more comfortable, a little bit better, and I can see him, he’s definitely going to be in the mix to compete for playing time this year.”
The 6-foot-4, 312-pound Burton spent five years at Kentucky, redshirting the first one and then becoming a four-year starter after that. He has a wealth of experience playing at a high level of college football in the SEC, and he may be ready to play in the NFL in Week One of his rookie season.
Tight end Luke Lachey has joined the Packers for the second time this offseason.
Lachey initially came to Green Bay as a waiver claim in May, but he was waived with a failed physical designation. Whatever the issue was at that time, it appears to no longer be a concern for the team because they announced Lachey’s signing on Monday afternoon.
Lachey was a Texans seventh-round pick last year and he spent the season on the practice squad. The Texans waived Lachey in May.
The Packers waived wide receiver Jakobie Keeney-James in a corresponding move. He had two catches for the team in Week 18 last season.
