- What do you get when you combine a football team and Thanksgiving? Well, if you’re talking about the NFL in terms of the holiday, then probably nothing. That’s because football season is almost always played on Sundays, while Thanksgiving falls on a different day each year.
- However, there have been a few NFL teams that have never participated in Thanksgiving Day games. The Atlanta Falcons are one of those teams. They’ve never played on the holiday, but they have played in both Monday Night Football and Thursday Night Football games on Thanksgiving.
- The Detroit Lions have also never participated in a Thanksgiving Day game. That’s because they moved to Detroit from Washington in 1933. The Lions’ first game in their new home was against the Washington Redskins on November 25th.
- The Miami Dolphins have also never participated in a Thanksgiving Day game. That’s because the team was founded in 1966, two years after Thanksgiving Day was established as a national holiday.
- There are a few other teams that have never participated in a Thanksgiving Day game, but those are the two that stand out the most.
History of Thanksgiving
- The NFL has played on Thanksgiving Day 16 times, but every team except the Detroit Lions has never played on Thanksgiving. The first game was in 1935, and the last was in 2009.
- The Dallas Cowboys was the first team to play on Thanksgiving, and they had played every year since then except in 1993 and 1994, when the NFL went into a labor dispute. The Detroit Lions have never played on Thanksgiving.
NFL Thanksgiving Games
- The NFL has never played on Thanksgiving. The first game on Thanksgiving was played in 1970, and it was the Oakland Raiders playing the Cleveland Browns. Since then, there have been a total of 26 games played on Thanksgiving. The most recent game was the Minnesota Vikings playing the Detroit Lions in 2016.
- There have been 16 games where the victor was determined by a margin of at least 10 points. The most recent game was the Dallas Cowboys defeating the Philadelphia Eagles by 38-24 in 2017.
Reasons that NFL Teams have not Played on Thanksgiving
- The NFL has never had a team play on Thanksgiving, and there are several reasons for this:
- The NFL is a football league, and football games traditionally occur on Saturdays. Thanksgiving is a holiday in the United States that celebrates the harvest, usually done by people not employed in the commercial fishing industry.
- Many NFL teams play in cold climates were playing on Thanksgiving would be unwise.
The NFL has no annual tradition of playing its championship game on Thanksgiving Day.
One exception occurred in 2014 when the Seattle Seahawks played the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game. This was the first time an NFL team played on Thanksgiving since the Detroit Lions played the Dallas Cowboys in 1971.
Which NFL team has never played on Thanksgiving
The Cleveland Browns have never played on Thanksgiving, while the Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions have only played one time each.
Conclusion
Which NFL team has never played on Thanksgiving? It’s a curious question. While some groups have skipped Thanksgiving in favor of other holidays (e.g., Christmas), a select few have never celebrated the holiday at all. Here is a list of every NFL team and their record on Thanksgiving Day:
- Dallas Cowboys – 0-5-1
- Detroit Lions – 1-4-0
- Green Bay Packers – 2-3-0
- Kansas City Chiefs – 1-2-1
- New England Patriots – 3-2-0
- Pittsburgh Steelers – 4-1-0