The NFL 2025 Schedule: Teams With Potentially The Hottest, Coldest, Wettest, Even Snowiest Games
The National Football League released its full 2025-2026 schedule on May 14, and while fans eagerly checked how tough their favorite team's road is this year, they may not have given as much thought to how challenging the weather may be.
As both a meteorologist and lifelong NFL fan, I love games affected by weather, such as last January's snowy NFC divisional playoff in Philadelphia between the host Eagles and the warm-weather Los Angeles Rams.
Meteorologists can't predict the weather for any game months in advance. But using data such as average high temperatures, and days with rain and snowfall, we calculated which of the 32 NFL teams could have the warmest, coldest, wettest, even snowiest schedules in 2025. We did not include games played in stadiums either with domes or retractable roofs in our calculations, but did include six of the seven games played in Europe (Madrid's Bernabéu Stadium has a retractable roof). We'll refer to the games we included in our calculations as "outdoor games".
Based on this, we also picked our top 5 games that could have the most interesting weather in 2025.
Average high temperature for outdoor games in 2025:
1. Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 73.9 degrees
2. Jacksonville Jaguars: 71.5 degrees
3. Miami Dolphins: 70 degrees
4. New Orleans Saints: 67.1 degrees
5. Carolina Panthers: 67 degrees
No big surprise, here. The three Florida teams will probably play the warmest schedule. They have three home games in the central Florida heat from late September through mid-October. And their "coldest" game after Thanksgiving may be a trip to Charlotte against the Carolina Panthers just before Christmas.
Sneaky warm schedule: While only the 13th warmest NFL schedule, of their seven outdoor games, the Detroit Lions trip to Green Bay is on the opening Sunday Sept. 7, and after mid-November, the Lions only game outdoors will be the first weekend of January in Chicago.
Average high temperature for outdoor games in 2025:
1. Green Bay Packers: 51.8 degrees
2. Chicago Bears: 54.3 degrees
3. Cleveland Browns: 55.3 degrees
4. Minnesota Vikings: 55.8 degrees
5. Pittsburgh Steelers: 56.1 degrees
Again, not a surprising list, here. The Packers don't play a single outdoor road game in a warmer climate in 2025, unless they make the playoffs. In fact their December schedule has two home games, and road games in cold cities, Denver, then Chicago. Of Minnesota's six outdoor games, two are in cooler Dublin and London, two are in late November in Green Bay and Seattle, and another is late December in the New Jersey Meadowlands.
Sneaky cold schedule: While they play the fewest outdoor games (four) of any NFL team this year, the Arizona Cardinals will make an early November trip to Seattle, and will travel to Cincinnati in late December. That bumped them to the middle of the pack - 16th coldest - schedule.
Monthly average days with measurable rain or snow for outdoor games in 2025:
1. Buffalo Bills: 13 days
2. Seattle Seahawks: 12.3 days
3. Cleveland Browns: 12.1 days
4. Miami Dolphins: 11.9 days
5. Pittsburgh Steelers: 11.6 days
We'll come back to the Bills shortly. Again, no surprise to see the Seattle Seahawks near the top of this list. By the time October rolls around, measurable rain typically falls 14 days during the month, then 18 days each in November and December. Miami can also be drenched by thunderstorms early in the season before the state's drier season arrives in November and December.
Sneaky wet schedule: The L.A. Rams play in the comfy, largely climate-controlled confines of SoFi Stadium. But their seven outdoor game schedule landed them the 14th wettest, including mid-September road games in Nashville and Philadelphia, a mid-October game in London, and a date in Seattle a week before Christmas. Fortunately for the Rams, that Seattle game is their only outdoor game after November unless they make the playoffs.
Monthly average days with measurable snow for outdoor games in 2025:
1. Buffalo Bills: 4.4 days
2. Cleveland Browns: 3.2 days
3. Green Bay Packers: 2.92 days
4. Pittsburgh Steelers: 2.86 days
5. Chicago Bears and Denver Broncos (tie): 2.5 days
The resiliency of the Bills' fans helping to clear snow, the pure joy of the players (well, at least the Bills players), and the snow globe spectacle make a Bills game in the snow the most enjoyable sporting event to me, except for one of those involving my favorite team, the Packers. That incredible lake-effect snow factory known as Lake Erie usually wrings out one snowy Bills game every 1 to 2 years. That's why they're number one on our list. If the lake snow machine is open for business early enough, it could welcome the warm-weather Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Nov. 16.
Sneaky snowy schedule: Incredibly, the L.A. Chargers schedule came in 10th on our snowiest list. They only have seven outdoor games, but two of them are in Kansas City on December 14, then in Denver the first weekend of January. After their either warm-weather city or indoor game schedule through early December, that could be a harsh dose of winter reality for Jim Harbaugh's squad.
Given all this, here are the games that grabbed my attention most for their weather potential.
5. New York Jets at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Sept. 21): I'm always interested to see how northern teams deal with the heat. Tampa's average high on Sept. 21 is 90 degrees. Not to mention the ever-present chance of afternoon thunderstorms in central Florida.
4. Minnesota Vikings at Seattle Seahawks (Nov. 30): It's a Midwest team from a climate-controlled stadium traveling to Seattle during its wettest month of the year. What could possibly go wrong, except Seattle now has Minnesota's quarterback from last year.
3. Miami Dolphins at New England Patriots (first weekend of January): Flipping the script of number 5 above, I'll circle any outdoor game in a cold weather location involving a Florida team traveling north, even if neither team is in the playoff race.
2. Green Bay Packers at Denver Broncos (Dec. 14): The cold and snow potential of this is just too tantalizing, apart from the possibility of each team in the playoff race. A mid-October 1984 "Broncos blizzard" was one of the most legendary snow games in NFL history. Incredibly, the Broncos only two touchdowns of that game were on consecutive fumble returns for touchdowns to start the game, the only time in NFL history a defense scored twice on its first two plays from scrimmage.
1. Buffalo Bills at Cleveland Browns (Dec. 21): If I could give the NFL schedule makers a group hug, I would cover this one game. It's the two snowiest NFL outdoor cities facing off - wait for it - four days before Christmas. I mean, consider what happened on Dec. 16, 2007, not only snow but also whipped by wind gusts up to 43 mph. I'm begging CBS to put this as their national game if the weather is anything like that this year. Consider it an early Christmas present to the legions of NFL fans who also love wild weather.
We don't have average hourly temperature data where we could hone in on the actual kickoff temperatures for, say, night games. So, the closest proxy we had for the warmest and coldest schedules was the average high temperature on the day of the game.
The exception to this was for the international games. For those, we only had monthly average high temperatures to use.
For precipitation and snow, daily average rain and snowfall data is essentially meaningless for ranking. That data simply divides the average monthly precipitation by the number of days. While average monthly rainfall total has some value delineating wetter and drier times of year, for this analysis, we were more interested in how often it rains or snows. Therefore, we used the monthly average number of days with measurable rain (at least .01 inches) or snow (at least 0.1 inches).
We did not have access to any snowfall data for the international game sites.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Washington Post
11 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Jets' Josh Reynolds says he's 'blessed' to be playing after rough year that included being shot
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Josh Reynolds has had plenty of time to reflect on how tumultuous his life was last year — on and off the field. The failed stint with Denver. A hand injury that landed him on injured reserve. The bullet wounds on his head and arm from an early morning shooting . His comeback from his injuries. His brief stay in Jacksonville.
Associated Press
18 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Jets' Josh Reynolds says he's 'blessed' to be playing after rough year that included being shot
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. (AP) — Josh Reynolds has had plenty of time to reflect on how tumultuous his life was last year — on and off the field. The failed stint with Denver. A hand injury that landed him on injured reserve. The bullet wounds on his head and arm from an early morning shooting. His comeback from his injuries. His brief stay in Jacksonville. The New York Jets wide receiver would rather keep that all in the past now and focus on his new opportunity. 'I'm blessed, you know?' Reynolds said Tuesday after practice during organized team activities. 'I'm blessed to be here, blessed to still be playing. So, I'm going to take it one day at a time and continue to get better.' At 30, Reynolds is one of the Jets' oldest players after New York's new regime under general manager Darren Mougey and coach Aaron Glenn focused on revamping the roster and infusing youth. Quarterback Tyrod Taylor, who turns 36 in August, is the team's oldest player, followed by long snapper Thomas Hennessy, who turns 31 next Wednesday, and then Reynolds. Garrett Wilson is the Jets' No. 1 wide receiver, but the team is looking for a complementary No. 2 — and Reynolds is in that mix, along with Allen Lazard, Tyler Johnson, Xavier Gipson, Malachi Corley and rookie Arian Smith, among others. 'I'm here for whatever they need me for,' Reynolds said. 'If it's (No.) 2, if it's (No.) 3, I mean, I'm here to help the team win.' The fact he's even here now, though, is in many ways a victory in itself. Reynolds, a fourth-round pick by the Rams out of Texas A&M in 2017, signed last offseason with Denver — where Mougey was the assistant GM — and caught 12 passes for 183 yards and a touchdown in five games before being placed on injured reserve with a broken finger. On Oct. 18, while still healing from that injury, Reynolds was shot in the left arm and the back of the head — injuries later classified as minor — after he left a strip club in Glendale, Colorado, at about 2:45 a.m. Reynolds said he and two other men were followed into and then out of the club before shots were fired into their SUV. Reynolds worked his way back onto the football field, but was waived by Denver in December before playing another game. He was claimed by Jacksonville and caught one pass in four games before being released in March. 'Yeah, life is precious, for sure,' said Reynolds, who has spoken very little about the shooting or the ups and downs of last season. 'But the more you've got to think about it, the more you're just kind of reliving it. And so I've moved past it, I'm here in Jersey and ready to get going.' The Jets signed Reynolds three weeks after he was cut by the Jaguars, giving him a one-year deal worth up to $5 million. Aside from Mougey's familiarity with Reynolds, Glenn also knew the wide receiver from his two-plus seasons in Detroit from 2021-23 when Glenn was the Lions' defensive coordinator. 'I care about good players, so, if he is a good player, I want him in the locker room,' Glenn said. 'If I knew him or not, that doesn't matter to me. The fact of the matter is he is a good player and I think he has a lot left in the tank. I want him in the locker room. Plus, he's a good person.' Reynolds also knows Jets offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand, who was the Lions' passing game coordinator during his last two seasons in Detroit. That gives Reynolds a bit of an edge in quickly picking up New York's system, which he said is 'pretty similar' to what he saw with the Lions, but with some 'twists and stuff' that Engstrand has installed. 'Honestly, I thought it was going to be a little harder, but, no, once I kind of heard and seen these plays, I was like, oh yeah, the memories started flooding back in,' Reynolds said. 'A lot of it is just more being able to kind of do it as soon as you hear it.' — AP NFL:
American Press
21 minutes ago
- American Press
SLC going to 9 games
The Southland Conference is moving to a nine-game football schedule. Monday, the league's athletic directors voted unanimously to add the ninth conference game starting in the fall of 2026. Currently, the SLC's 10 football-playing schools will play eight league games this season. For instance, McNeese will not play defending Southland champ Incarnate Word, which would likely be one of the conference's showcase contests in the fall. This is the first season with 10 football schools since the league regrouped after the 2021 purge, when five schools left the conference. This will also be the first season with Texas-Rio Grande Valley playing football. 'I like the idea of playing everybody in the conference,' McNeese head coach Matt Viator said. 'It makes a lot of sense to me. You get a true champion that way. It gives us another game against a like opponent.' The A.D.s were on the same page, as each school continues to struggle to find the proper schedule. 'We were all in agreement about it,' said McNeese A.D. Heath Schroyer. 'I think this is a great move by our league as we look to the future. Moving forward, it will be a lot easier for scheduling for all of us and will give us more shared revenue.' The Southland's decision comes as the Football Championship Subdivision looks to expand to a 12-game schedule overall every year. The Cowboys and the rest of the FCS typically play an 11-game schedule, unless the weekly calendar allows for 12 games before the Thanksgiving break. That usually happens about every four or five seasons. However, they have 12 games scheduled for next season, following a dozen games and a 6-6 finish last year. Twelve FCS games could be on the horizon as of 2026. Earlier this spring, the FCS Oversight Committee met and recommended that its schools play 12 games annually, starting with the 2026 schedule. The one-game extension is expected to be finalized during the Division I Council meeting June 24-25. 'I think it will pass and that is good for our programs,' said SLC Commissioner Chris Grant. 'It is another game for us to get revenue, and it has been hard for some of our teams to get games.' Securing another Division 1 contest and avoiding the need to travel outside the league's footprint is a significant win. 'This keeps our regional rivalries going,' said Grant. 'This is a big thing for our schools. We hope it could help lead to getting two or three teams back in the postseason. 'Our schools have upgraded their schedules, but we haven't seen the advantages of that yet.' Grant added that at the meetings, the league discussed a new contract with ESPN and efforts to secure more games on linear networks. Last year, McNeese opened its season with a game at Tarleton State on ESPN. Nicholls and UIW will open this year the same way. 'I'm really excited about the nine and 12 games,' Viator said. 'Anytime you get an opportunity to play a game, I think it is great for everyone.' Grant said the good news this year is that the league is not concerned with expansion; instead, it is focusing on moving forward as a group. That includes the 22-game conference basketball schedule that starts next season. Also discussed was the possible expansion of the postseason basketball tournaments. Currently, the top eight teams qualify for the tournament; however, the league is considering expanding to 10 teams in the future. Grant said the league would need more hotel rooms in Lake Charles, which has a limited number, as the state high school tournament is in town at the same time.
