What Time Do NFL Games Start?
It’s NFL season! Check out this blog post to find out what time your favorite team’s games start.
Introduction
American football is one of the most popular sports in the United States, and the National Football League (NFL) is the country’s top professional football league. NFL games are broadcast on a number of national and regional television networks, and they typically start at either 1:00 p.m. or 4:05 p.m. Eastern Time on Sundays. Some games may start at other times, such as 8:20 p.m. on Thursdays or 12:00 p.m. on Saturdays, but those are relatively rare exceptions.
What time do NFL games start?
The starting time for NFL games varies depending on the day of the week. Sunday games typically start at 1:00 p.m. ET, while Monday night games start at 8:15 p.m. ET. Some Saturday games may also be played, typically in late December. The NFL playoffs start in early January.
Regular season
The starting time for NFL games are generally the same, with a few exceptions.
Most games during the NFL’s regular season start at 1:00 p.m. ET on Sundays, although there are some exceptions. Games that are played on Monday and Thursday nights start at 8:15 p.m. ET, while games that are played on Saturday start at 4:30 p.m. ET.
The NFL’s regular season starts on the first Sunday in September and ends on the first Sunday in January. The playoffs start the following weekend, with the conference championship games being played on the third Sunday in January. The Super Bowl is played on the fourth Sunday in January.
Pre-season
The National Football League released its full schedule on Wednesday night, and with it the times and dates for all 256 regular-season games. While we now know when each game will be played, there is still one big question mark: when will they start?
The NFL has not announced start times for any of the games beyond the traditional 4:25 p.m. ET slot on Sundays. That means we don’t yet know when to expect the prime-time games on Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights, nor do we know when the 1 p.m. ET games will begin.
The league is expected to announce those start times later this spring, once it has finalized its broadcast schedules with NBC, CBS, FOX and ESPN. So for now, we’ll just have to wait a little longer to find out when we’ll be able to watch our favorite teams in action this fall.
Post-season
The NFL’s post-season schedule is set by NFL playoff rules, which stipulate that all playoff games must be played on a Saturday or Sunday.
The first round of the NFL playoffs, known as the Wild Card round, features four games. These games are played on Saturday and Sunday, with the top two seeds in each conference receiving a bye to the Divisional round.
The Divisional round is played on Saturday and Sunday, with the top seed in each conference receiving a bye to the Conference Championship game.
The Conference Championship games are played on Sunday, with the winners advancing to the Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl is played on Sunday.
Conclusion
No matter what time zone you’re in, or what time of year it is, there’s always an NFL game happening somewhere. Thanks to the league’s popular Sunday Night Football broadcasts, prime time games start at 8:20 PM ET on most nights during the season.
But that’s not the only time you can catch NFL action. There are also early afternoon games that usually start at 1:00 PM ET, and late afternoon games that usually start at 4:05 or 4:25 PM ET.
If you want to know what time a specific game is starting, the best place to look is the NFL schedule released every week during the season. The schedule will list all of the upcoming week’s games along with their respective start times.
