Detroit Lions 2016 Regular Season Schedule Released

The Lions’ home and road opponents have been set for some time but now we know the full weekly breakdown of the Detroit Lions 2016 Regular Season Schedule.

There may be no greater indicator of the NFL’s dominance of the American sports landscape than that the annual schedule release has become another important date on the league’s offseason calendar. Well, happy schedule release day, Lions fans!

Thanks to tonight’s NFL schedule release, we now know the Detroit Lions 2016 regular season schedule looks in weekly form.

Based on division games, the Lions finish in last year’s standings and the NFL’s usual schedule rotation, we already knew the breakdown of home and road opponents. For a quick reminder:

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Home opponents: Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Redskins, Jacksonville Jaguars, Tennessee Titans, Los Angeles Rams
Away opponents: Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, New Orleans Saints

Home and road games against the Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings are givens every year as NFC North games. The NFL’s schedule rotation has each NFC North team playing every team in the AFC South and NFC East so those teams get added to the Lions schedule as well. The remaining two games are filled based on matching up with the teams that finished in the same place in their division standings as the Lions who were not already set to appear on the Lions’ schedule based on the division rotation. That is how the Rams and Saints came to round out the list of opponents.

Now we know how all those matchups will be slotted to form the Lions’ 2016 regular season week-by-week schedule.

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Highlighting the schedule every year is the annual Thanksgiving Day game with the Minnesota Vikings being the opponent (as was widely rumored) this year. No other Thursday game on the schedule means the Lions will wear their Color Rush alternates on Thanksgiving Day.

Also of note is just one primetime game for the Lions this year and it won’t be at Ford Field.

Most Lions fans will also make a point to find out when the road game at the Green Bay Packers falls because a late-season game means battling the Packers and the weather. Fortunately that won’t be an issue this year with a week three trip to Lambeau.

Next: Lions 7-Round Mock Draft v4.0

The Lions 2016 preseason schedule was announced last week with information still trickling in as dates and times are firmed up. The known preseason schedule so far is as follows:

Aug. 12: at Pittsburgh Steelers
Aug. 18-22: vs. Cincinnati Bengals
Aug. 27 (tentative): at Baltimore Ravens
Sept. 1: vs. Buffalo Bills

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