The Detroit Lions knew exactly what they were signing up for when they pushed to play in Germany next season—and according to the NFL's top broadcast planner, it's all working out just as they'd hoped.
"They knew what they were getting into, and I think it broke the way they hoped it would," said Mike North, the NFL's vice president of broadcast planning, during a conference call Friday. The comments came one day after the league released full 2026 schedules for all 32 teams, revealing a grueling but historic stretch for Detroit.
The Lions' most challenging sequence comes in Weeks 10 through 12, an 11-day gauntlet that includes an international showdown against the New England Patriots in Germany (Nov. 15), a home game versus the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Nov. 22), and their annual Thanksgiving classic against the Chicago Bears (Nov. 26).
North explained that coordinating the NFL's German game meant navigating "FIFA windows and Bundesliga schedules and everything else," which made a late-November date the clearest path forward. That timing placed the game dangerously close to Thanksgiving—a holiday the Lions have owned since 1945, playing every single year without fail.
"So, a lot of conversations with (Lions president) Rod (Wood) relative to, 'What is this schedule going to look like?'" North recalled. "Understanding full well it's going to be three straight home games, but it's going to be a game in Germany, come home to a home game (against the Bucs) and then a short week at home again (on Thanksgiving). But it was important enough to the organization, to the coaching staff and to our international folks to make sure we found a way to make that work."
The Lions won't have a bye week after their trip to Germany, but they did score a major win: no Thursday game the week after Thanksgiving. That's a break from the last two seasons, when Detroit played on Black Friday in both 2024 and 2025. Last year's post-Thanksgiving matchup against the Dallas Cowboys drew 20 million viewers, setting "a high-water mark for the Amazon (Prime) schedule," North noted.
Instead of a quick turnaround, the Lions get a 10-day breather before heading to Atlanta to face the Falcons—a welcome reward for a team that willingly took on one of the most demanding stretches in franchise history.