Detroit Lions schedule rumors: Conflicting reports on New York Jets game
By Zac Snyder
There are conflicting reports about where the New York Jets game will fall on the Detroit Lions’ schedule, but both are high profile slots.
Thanksgiving Day is an extra special day in Detroit as it traditionally involves food, family and Detroit Lions football in some kind of order. The annual Thanksgiving Day game in Detroit is one of the first things any Lions fans will look at every year when the regular season schedule is released.
The Lions hosted the Minnesota Vikings on Thanksgiving each of the last two years. An oddity in the team’s Thanksgiving history as it was the first time since 1979 and 1980 that an opponent made back-to-back Thanksgiving appearances in Detroit.
The Green Bay Packers have been popular Thanksgiving opponents, making appearances in alternating years from 2007 to 2013. They would make sense as a popular pick in schedule predictions but it sounds like that won’t be what we see when the NFL releases the full regular season schedule this evening.
According to ESPN’s Dianna Russini, it may be the New York Jets who will spend their Thanksgiving in Detroit.
[Update: Russini has since deleted the tweet]
The Jets would make the first AFC opponent to come to Detroit on Thanksgiving since the Houston Texans in 2012. The Lions used to alternate between NFC and AFC opponents as the television rights alternated between FOX and CBS, but that hasn’t been the case in recent years as the league has adopted more flexible procedures for assigning games to their television partners.
But what if the rumblings are wrong? There is conflicting information ahead of the schedule release as the New York Post says that the Jets-Lions game will be a Monday Night Football game in week one.
"The Jets will open the season in primetime.Gang Green’s 2018 campaign will begin in Detroit against the Lions on “Monday Night Football,” The Post has learned."
Either way, it is sounding like the Jets will occupy a prominent place in the Lions’ 2018 schedule. We’ll know for sure tonight at 8 p.m. ET when the regular season schedule is officially released.