2025 Fantasy Football Schedule Review: Patrick Mahomes, Dak Prescott In Focus

The 2025 NFL schedule was released on Wednesday night, and it’s chock-full of big-time matchups and games loaded with fantasy superstars. While I’ve already talked about why the schedule release is mostly useless in fantasy football leagues, at least in terms of fantasy points allowed data and the “best” and “worst” schedules, there are a few interesting nuggets I picked out of the new 2025 NFL slate that you need to know.

Here’s a look.

Strength of Schedule: QBs | RBs | WRs | TEs

The Bye Weeks

The byes begin in Week 5 with the Bears, Falcons, Packers and Steelers and end in Week 14 with the 49ers, Giants, Patriots and Panthers. At least there isn’t a bye-maggedon (six teams on a bye) in the week before the fantasy postseason! That was the case last season.  

There is only one week in this stretch with no byes (Week 13). That occurred twice last year. Three weeks have two teams off (Weeks 6, 7 and 11). Five weeks have four teams on a bye  (Weeks 5, 9, 10, 12, 14), and just one (Week 8) features a dreaded bye-mageddon. So, the NFL did fantasy fans a favor by not having two such weeks during the 2025 season.

The most notable among these bye weeks is Week 10, when managers will be without the fantasy stars from Cincinnati, Dallas, Kansas City, and, to a lesser degree, Tennessee. If you are wondering, the aforementioned bye-mageddon includes the Cardinals, Jaguars, Lions, Raiders, Rams and Seahawks. But again, it’s in Week 8 and there’s only one such week.

Travel

Playing in the National Football League can be very taxing on the body … but so can travel. The teams that will travel the most miles next season include the Chargers (37,086 miles), Rams (34,832), Seahawks (31,302), Jaguars (29,006), and 49ers (28,363). The teams that will travel the least are the Bengals (8,753), Bills (10,546), Ravens (10,647), Lions (11,411) and Bears (12,522). You can find the full list of NFL teams and their travel miles here.

International Games

The National Football League will hold seven international games this season (the most ever), starting in Week 1 when the Chiefs face the Chargers in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The Steelers will face the Vikings in Dublin, Ireland in Week 4, and then the Vikings will travel to London, England to face the Browns at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in Week 5. It’s the first of three straight weeks with a game in London. The Broncos and the Jets will face off at Hotspur in Week 6, and the Rams and Jaguars will battle it out at Wembley Stadium in Week 7.

The final two international games will see the Falcons and the Colts playing in Berlin, Germany in Week 10, and the Commanders and Dolphins will face off in Madrid, Spain in Week 11. Sans the Week 1 matchup (8 p.m. ET), these games will all begin at 9:30 a.m. ET.

Primetime Games

It will come as a shock to no one that the Chiefs will play the most primetime games (7). The Cowboys are second with six (also not shocking). Teams with five primetime games include the 49ers, Bills, Chargers, Commanders, Dolphins, Eagles, Falcons, and Lions. There are 10 teams with four games in primetime, including the Bengals, Broncos, Buccaneers, Packers, Rams, Ravens, Seahawks, Steelers, Texans and Vikings. The Bears, Giants, Patriots and Raiders will play three games in primetime, and the Cardinals and Jets have two such contests.

The Colts, Jaguars and Panthers have one primetime game on their schedules each, while the Browns, Saints and Titans were left off the primetime schedule altogether.

Championship Week Concerns

The NFL schedule could cause fantasy fans a lot of headaches in their league title games, which starts on Christmas Day (set those lineups early!). The slate begins with Dallas and Washington (1 p.m. ET), continues with Detroit and Minnesota (4:30 p.m. ET) and ends with Denver and Kansas City (8:15 p.m. ET). As you can see, there are a lot of fantasy superstars playing on Christmas. The Commanders have a slight advantage in that they’ll play their Week 16 game on a Friday, giving them two extra days to recover and prepare for Dallas.

However, the Broncos, Chiefs, Cowboys, Lions and Vikings will play two games in five days and three games in 12 days, and they’re doing it late in the season (Week 16). What’s more, some managers will have to make tough lineup decisions on injured players since we won’t have the actual injury report for the Sunday slate of games before the three Christmas Day games kick off. Bah humbug.

Clearly, the NFL didn’t do us any favors.

Big QB Battles in Championship Week

If you’re looking for oodles of fantasy points when you need them the most, look at some of these potentially outstanding quarterback matchups projected for Week 17:

Dak Prescott vs. Jayden Daniels (Christmas)
Bo Nix vs. Patrick Mahomes (Christmas)
Baker Mayfield vs. Tua Tagovailoa
Jalen Hurts vs. Josh Allen
Kyler Murray vs. Joe Burrow
Lamar Jackson vs. Jordan Love
Caleb Williams vs. Brock Purdy
C.J. Stroud vs. Justin Herbert

There are two other projected quarterback matchups that could be very fantasy relevant too … Jared Goff vs. J.J. McCarthy (Christmas) and Drake Maye vs, Justin Fields.

Flying High Again

The Arizona Cardinals are projected to have the easiest schedule based on fantasy points allowed data from last season. Kyler Murray has the easiest slate among quarterbacks, James Conner has the fifth-easiest schedule among running backs, Marvin Harrison Jr. and the Cardinals wideouts come in at 14th, and Trey McBride is in the top 10 among tight ends.

Big Trouble In Big D

The Cowboys are tied for the fifth-toughest schedule based on the 2024 records of their opponents, so it’s no surprise to see them also having tough fantasy slates. Dak Prescott is near the bottom among quarterbacks, and the same goes for CeeDee Lamb and Jake Ferguson at wide receiver and tight end, respectively. Javonte Williams is in the middle of the pack at running back. I’m not telling you to avoid these players necessarily, since I’ve said that, but you can use the information to make choices between players with similar value.