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Best and worst NFL schedule release videos, from Chargers’ Minecraft theme to Patriots’ Dave Portnoy cameo

The NFL’s schedule announcement has become a staple on the football calendar, for better or worse, and no one shines more on that one night in May than the league’s 32 social media teams.

Dubbed the “NFL’s creative Super Bowl” by Sports Illustrated, the schedule reveal can bring out the very best of a team’s social media gurus. Schedule reveal videos have effectively become a requirement for each team, and the production value as a whole has skyrocketed in recent years.

Countless celebrities were featured in last year’s schedule release videos, but some of the best were also the most simple.

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Who did it the best in 2025? Here are the best and worst schedule reveal videos from Wednesday night’s announcement. 

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Best NFL schedule release videos

Los Angeles Chargers

By now, the Chargers’ social media team has a reputation to uphold. They’ve impressed fans in recent years with their videos, which often include a good mix of creativity, humor and slight digs at their opponents.

Once again, the Chargers nailed it. The Minecraft platform may not be the most creative idea, but they executed it perfectly, going game-by-game — how schedule releases should be — while including hilarious jabs at each of their opponents within the game. 

From the Chiefs using an Ender portal to travel to Brazil in Week 1, to the ghost of Saquon Barkley haunting the Giants, to the Colts’ quarterbacks going back-and-forth in a race, to the “Ender Eagle” taking down the Chiefs players, there’s a whole lot to unpack in the best way. Plus, the video itself looks good and isn’t ridiculously long.

The Chargers’ schedule release videos are often ones you want to go back and watch again to find Easter eggs. The 2025 edition accomplishes that once again, giving NFL fans some laughs while learning the team’s schedule through the lens of Minecraft. 

Kansas City Chiefs

Sticking in the AFC West, the Chiefs played on some nostalgia in an unexpected way, playing on the old game show “Cash Cab.”

“Cash Cab” was once a fun way to combine trivia with reality TV, with Ben Bailey hosting the show as he drove people around in his cab. Kansas City executed this terrifically. With the idea in place and Bailey involved, all the Chiefs’ social media team had to do was come up with the trivia questions to include in the “Chiefs Cab.”

Humor isn’t the strength of this schedule release video, like some others. It’s the creative idea that makes this one stand out, bringing back a game show that most people probably forgot about while offering some interesting trivia about each team on the Chiefs’ 2025 schedule. 

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Baltimore Ravens

This one isn’t perfect, but it’s also too well-done to ignore. 

“Severence” became the biggest show out there a few months back, and the Ravens’ schedule release video is a shockingly well-produced nod to it. It recreates some of the best scenes from the show using players and staff, and there’s genuinely some good camera work here. 

There’s two knocks against this schedule release video, though, one being that it doesn’t really reveal the schedule until the end. The “Severence” theme is more-so just a fun video than actually implementing Baltimore’s 2025 schedule. And the other negative is the length; understandably, they wanted to include some of the best “Severence” scenes, but seven minutes is probably too long.

It could have been better, but with the creativity factor and how well it was produced, it’s hard to not call this one of the best schedule release videos this year.

Buffalo Bills

This one may not work for everybody, but if you’re a basketball fan as well as a football fan, it’s hard not to enjoy seeing Allen Iverson pop up on your screen. 

No, this isn’t creative to a level where you’re questioning how the social media team came up with the idea — the “AI” and “Allen Iverson” memes have existed for a while. And no, the Bills didn’t do a good job of implementing the schedule into the video itself.

But the strength of this one is the cameo that Buffalo pulled off in a funny way. Having Josh Allen only helps as he suggests to just “use AI” for the schedule release, and when you first watch it, seeing Iverson come up on your screen feels surprising — especially because this should have been the Eagles’ idea, not the Bills’.

The idea was strong enough to lift this one, but execution could have been better in how the schedule was revealed. Still, Iverson makes this one funny and memorable.

Atlanta Falcons

Using video games for the schedule release isn’t a new idea, so the Falcons don’t get many points there. The Commanders, Chargers and 49ers all used video games for their videos this year as well. But the “ATL Kart” was still funny, and it wasn’t quite Chargers-level, but it had good digs at the Falcons’ opponents.

The best ones include the Dolphins saying “We got the NFL schedule release before GTA6,” the Patriots’ player stopping for “Free Air,” and of course, the shot of what’s supposed to be Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson sitting with a sign that says “We’re not talking about this.”

Old Mario Kart is a fun way to do the schedule release video, and the Falcons also made it funny in the process. Plus, it only helps that the social media team blatantly gave their predictions for the NFC South standings this season, using the Mario Kart winners’ circle to put the Falcons first, Buccaneers second, Panthers third and Saints last.

MORE: Every team’s strength of schedule for 2025

Worst NFL schedule release videos

Philadelphia Eagles

Let’s start with the defending Super Bowl champions. That championship status is exactly the reason that this one is disappointing; the Eagles’ social media team should be feeling bold right now, just months removed from Philadelphia crushing Kansas City in the title game. Instead, they played it extremely safe.

The reference is obvious here, using the “2001: A Space Odyssey” theme with a shot of the Lombardi Trophy. Cool, certainly, but not creative enough for a team that should still be flexing its muscles as arguably the best in the league.

Add in the fact that this video isn’t even two minutes long, doesn’t reveal the schedule until the end, and puts the schedule in such a small font that you have to zoom in, and the defending Super Bowl champions leave you feeling disappointed.

New England Patriots

Listen — everybody has their own opinions on Dave Portnoy. Love him or hate him, that’s fine. He isn’t the problem here. It’s just the overall lack of creativity.

It feels like the Patriots’ staff needed a last-minute idea for the video, so they decided getting a live reaction to the schedule from a New England celebrity was the best they could do. 

Portnoy attempts to take a dig at each of the Patriots’ opponents as he reads the schedule aloud, but most of his jokes don’t come off very well whether he had a script or not. Unfortunately, saying that Lamar Jackson “starts playing like poop” late in the NFL season isn’t very funny.

The team’s six Lombardi Trophies also aren’t adding much here — are we really supposed to expect the Patriots to add a seventh this upcoming season, or is that just another copout to make the video seem cool?

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Here’s the good thing: Jon Gruden works a lot better than Portnoy did for a schedule release video. His funky personality and odd sayings are entertaining at the very least, and listening him emphasize the “B” in “Buccaneers,” “Baker Mayfield” and “Bucky Irving” is a bit funny.

But the bad outweighs the good for Tampa Bay’s schedule release video. The unboxing idea was fine, nothing all that impressive, but the biggest issue is the length. The video is 10 minutes and 49 seconds long. Who wants to sit and wait that long to find out the full schedule? Gruden spends around 15 seconds on buffalo wings alone.

Another thing that doesn’t make sense here is the fact that the opponents are revealed out of order. Why would you start with the Week 12 opponent, then bounce around? The best schedule release videos go in order of the actual schedule.

The items in the box are fun, Gruden is an absolute character, but this wasn’t executed as well as it could have been.

Cleveland Browns

Well first of all, I’m scared. “Brownie the Elf” is giving off a strange vibe here, and I didn’t even know he existed before, let alone appearing in promotional videos for the Browns. 

The weirdness of this one makes it very unique, which maybe isn’t a bad thing. The “time” theme, or however you want to describe it, looks pretty cool, and the Browns found some creative ways to implement their opponents for the 2025 season in a brief manner. Give them points for not making a five-minutes-plus-long video.

But again, this one is just too bizarre to really enjoy. The video was also not received well by fans, it doesn’t present the opponents in order, and it appears as if it was made with AI assistance — and no, not Allen Iverson — which tends to upset people. 

The Browns could have done much better than this video, which feels more like a preview for a horror movie than a schedule release.

Detroit Lions

Talk about boring. The NFL schedule release videos have become an annual event, and the Lions did absolutely nothing special here.

Using helmet matchups with drone shots feels like another copout idea without much thought put into it. Sure, the drone shots look cool, there were some nice-looking locations for the helmets, and they at least went in order of the schedule, but this is about as basic as basic gets.

At least with teams like the Browns, Packers, etc., struck out with a weird idea. I’d rather the social media team swing for the fences with a crazy theme for the schedule release than just decide to do something anybody else can easily do.

With the bad taste still in the Lions’ mouth after their playoff exit last season, the social media team didn’t do much to get fans excited here. This may be the most boring video of the 2025 cycle.

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