Schedule-makers were impressed enough to give Falcons five prime-time games

Despite coming off their seventh consecutive losing season, the Falcons landed two “Monday Night Football” games, two Sunday night games and a Thursday night game. The team’s global marketing agreement in Germany helped the franchise be selected to play the first NFL game in Berlin.

“We have a lot of games to populate,” NFL’s vice president of broadcasting, Onnie Bose, said to a question posed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on a conference call Thursday. “(The Falcons) are a team that was competitive right until the end of the season (and were) in the mix for the playoffs.”

The Falcons will play the Bills (Week 6) and Rams (Week 17) on “Monday Night Football.” They’ll play the Vikings (Week 2) and at San Francisco (Week 7) on “Sunday Night Football.” They’ll play the Bucs on “Thursday Night Football” (Week 15).

“The mix of opponents that they have this year (gave us) a lot of opportunities to showcase them in those games across our (broadcast) packages,” Bose said. “We were really interested in that late-in-the-season Atlanta-Tampa Bay game. It feels like a game that could have some good impact on ‘Thursday Night Football’ for the NFC South.”

The game against the Bills will start at 7:15 p.m. and be played as a side-by-side Monday game, with the Bears at Commanders starting at 8:15 p.m. The Monday night game against the Rams is not a side-by-side game.

This will be the Falcons’ third international game over the past five seasons. They played in London against the Jets in 2021 and against the Jaguars in 2023.

“We talked about the complexity with more and more games,” Bose said. “I think one factor is Atlanta is one of the Global Marketing teams in Germany, so that played into that. But also just as part of them being opponents of Indianapolis and making sure that we’ve got a competitive and attractive game to bring to Berlin for the first time (was a factor).”

The Falcons’ 2025 schedule presents some challenges.

-Four of the first five opponents made the playoffs last season: Bucs, Vikings, Commanders and Bills. The Panthers, the Week 3 opponent, did not make the playoffs.

-The Falcons were pounded by the Vikings (42-21) last season and lost to the Commanders (30-24) in overtime. The Bills went to the AFC title game last season.

-The last half of November and first part of December will be key for the Falcons as they will be on the road for four of five games.

The Falcons are at the Saints on Nov. 23, at Jets on Nov. 30, home to host the Seahawks on Dec. 7 before heading back on the road to play at Tampa Bay on Dec. 11 and then at Arizona on Dec. 21.

The Falcons have lost six consecutive games to the Cardinals and have not won in Arizona since 2001.

After playing in Berlin on Nov. 9, the Falcons will host Carolina in an NFC South game on Nov. 16. In the past, teams would be scheduled a bye week after playing an international game.

“As the world gets more complicated with more and more international games and all of the other obligations across the schedule, that bye after an international game is not a guarantee,” NFL vice president of broadcast planning Mike North said. “We’ve learned over time, after 15 years of playing in Europe, the bye is less of a crucial and must-have situation. There are teams who often ask us not to have their byes.”

The NFL’s broadcast partners fight for games that involve the Chiefs, Eagles and Cowboys. The Commanders and Broncos joined the Lions and Bengals as teams with more national appeal by making playoff runs last season.

“It’s not just about do we think they are going to be better, we don’t know ... but our broadcast partners do,” North said. “So when we met with all of the broadcast partners in this process and they make their lists of hey, here are some of the games and some of the teams that we’d most be interested in.”

Winning helps.

“Obviously, you have your heavy dose of Dallas and Kansas City on there,” North said. “... (The) Lions, Washington, Denver, teams that have played their way into bigger national television windows. That’s why you do find more of those teams being more represented. Not just because we think they are going to be better, but because our broadcast partners are eager to showcase them in bigger windows.”