From a TV perspective, the NFL is coming off a record-breaking 2025 season:• The Thanksgiving game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Dallas Cowboys was the most-watched regular-season game ever, with more than 57 million viewers.The Chiefs have dominated the top of the national TV ratings rankings in the Patrick Mahomes era, and presuming he’s healthy and playing after his knee injury and offseason recovery, the Chiefs’ slots on the national TV schedule will continue to loom among the top audience drivers (as you will notice below).• The NFL averaged 18.7 million viewers across the season, the highest since 1989 (and up 10 percent over 2024).• Of the top 100 most-watched TV programs of 2025, the NFL accounted for 89 of them.• The Saturday night wild-card game between the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers was the most-streamed NFL game ever, topping multiple streaming records set throughout the season.To be sure, the X-factor behind all those numbers — along with every enthusiastically promoted sports-TV audience number you have seen over the past year — is that Nielsen adjusted its industry-standard measurement formula to (more accurately) include digital and “out of home” viewing. The TV equivalent of a rising tide seemingly lifted audience numbers for nearly every sports broadcast out there, including the NFL; the follow-up to that is whether games this season exceed last year’s numbers, stay flat or maybe even decline a bit. However, based on last year, the biggest games will be gigantic audience drivers, with holidays (does “NFL Week 1” count?), prime time and even a few regular ol’ Sunday afternoons leading the way.With that in mind and the 2026 NFL schedule now officially released, let’s look at some of the most interesting contenders for the biggest national TV draws of the season.Thanksgiving: The feastChicago Bears at Detroit Lions (1 p.m. ET, CBS)