The National Football League celebrates Christmas with three games spread out over the entire day. The action begins at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time with the Washington Commanders hosting the Dallas Cowboys. An afternoon and evening affair features the Detroit Lions at Minnesota and the Denver Broncos visiting the Kansas City Chiefs.
I am certain that when the schedule makers selected these three matchups for Christmas Day, they were hopeful that six teams in the playoff hunt would meet in key battles. In fact, only two of the six teams in action today have a chance to advance to the postseason and only one of them leads their division.
It has been a difficult season for both the Washington Commanders and Dallas Cowboys. The Commanders advanced all the way to the NFC Championship Game last season, but this year have struggled with injuries to key players and seemingly in a year-long fog after last season's surprise success. The Commanders have long been out of serious contention for a playoff berth and currently are nine-point home underdogs to a Dallas team that also has a losing record this season.
Under first-year head coach Brian Schottenheimer the Cowboys traded away their best defensive player on the eve of the 2025 season. Contract negotiations was the major factor in Jerry Jones packing up Micah Parsons and shipping him to the Green Bay Packers. Without Parsons, and with an otherwise below average stop unit, the Cowboys wasted one of Dak Prescott’s good seasons and come into action today out of the playoff hunt with only six regular season victories.
The afternoon game finds two teams that met each other on the final day of the 2024 season to determine which squad would claim the number one seed for the National Football Conference playoffs. This year, the Vikings have already been eliminated from playoff possibilities, and the Lions chances are hanging by a thread.
Early in the season, in a year in which head coach Dan Campbell had to rebuild his coaching staff including a pair of new coordinators with the loss of Ben Johnson to the Chicago Bears and Aaron Glenn to the New York Jets. Those two men, who coordinated the Lions offense and defense respectively last season, got head coaching gigs with the Bears and Jets. After an open game loss to the Packers in Green Bay, Detroit seemed to have steadied their ship with wins in their next four games.