Why Do the Cowboys and Lions Play on Thanksgiving Every Year?

The story behind the Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Lions and NFL becoming as much of a part of Thanksgiving as roasted turkey and pumpkin pie.

NFL players sport a special John Madden patch during Thanksgiving Day games. / Lon Horwedel-Imagn Images

There are very few things in life better than settling down on the couch after eating an enormous plate of food for some Thanksgiving football. 

It’s tough to think of a more American experience than pigskin on the television and turkey on the table. 

In fact, more people watched last season’s Thanksgiving Day games than ever before, with a record 34.1 million viewers tuning in. That figure broke the previous record of 33.6 million viewers in 2022. 

While there was a time in this nation’s history where football wasn’t played on Thanksgiving, the truth is that Turkey Day football has been around longer than it hasn’t. 

America is currently 248 years old and we’ve been playing football in some way, shape or form on Thanksgiving since 1876. That’s 148 years of Thanksgiving football.

So who was playing in 1876? Well, it wasn’t a professional rivalry but a bitter collegiate one. Harvard and Yale participate in a contest simply called ‘The Game’ each year on Thanksgiving in the final game of the team’s season. Yale leads the all-time series 70-61-8 and is currently on a two-game winning streak. 

Why Do the Detroit Lions Play Every Thanksgiving?

The NFL didn’t begin playing on Thanksgiving until 1934 when the Detroit Spartans took on the Chicago Bears. A local radio executive, George A. Richards, purchased the team for roughly $15,000 (then playing in Portsmouth, Ohio) and moved them to the Motor City earlier that year. 

When he realized that the Lions were often playing second fiddle to the Detroit Tigers, he decided to schedule a game on Thanksgiving. A whopping 26,000 fans showed up to watch the 10-1 Lions take on the 11-0 Bears. 

Chicago won 19-16 at University of Detroit Stadium and experts believe another 25,000 would have attended had there been seats available. 

Richards had connections with NBC officials and used those connections to establish a network of 94 radio stations to broadcast the game not just in the Chicago and Detroit area but nationwide. 

Graham McNamee and Don Wilson called the game, giving the fledgling football league a massive dose of crucial exposure to the nation. 

The following year, the Lions would win on Thanksgiving and capture the NFL championship. 

Overall, Detroit is 37-45-2 all time on Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, the Dallas Cowboys wouldn’t become a Thanksgiving staple until 1966.

Why Do the Dallas Cowboys Play Every Thanksgiving?

The first half of the 1960s were not kind to the Cowboys. Dallas was just 25-53-4 from 1960-1965. So when the NFL needed volunteers after expanding to two Thanksgiving Day games, team president Tex Schramm had an idea. 

See, Schramm wanted to boost the Cowboys’ popularity and knew national television would be a great way to do so. But he also knew the NFL was going to have this scheduling issue year after year. 

So Schramm volunteered to play in the Thanksgiving Day game as long as Dallas could host the game every year after that. 

Initially, the NFL was concerned about viewership, but Dallas quickly turned things around. 

The 1966 season—which was Dallas’ first-time playing on Thanksgiving—catapulted a run of success that lasted well into the 1980s for America’s Team. The Cowboys set an attendance record of 80,259 and finished 10-3 that season. 

The Cowboys would go on to make the playoffs in 18 of the following 20 seasons, winning two Super Bowls in the 1970s, launching the extremely popular Cowboys cheerleaders calendar and developing the face of the league in former Navy quarterback Roger Staubach. 

By 1979, the Cowboys would be called “America’s Team.”

Dallas has played on Thanksgiving Day every year since 1966, except for 1975 and 1977 when the NFL awarded the game to the St. Louis Cardinals, again in an attempt to boost the team’s popularity. 

Overall, the Cowboys are 33-22-1 on Thanksgiving. 

The Cultural Significance of the Cowboys and Lions on Thanksgiving

While the NFL wouldn’t admit it, there was an era when Americans simply didn’t care too much about football—professional or otherwise. 

Around 1880, when the Harvard-Yale game began to be played in New York, many in the era began to treat the game as sort of a kick off to the holiday season. By the time the NFL began playing on Thanksgiving in the mid 1930s, the sport already went hand-in-hand with the holiday. 

Still, it took another 30 years or so for the NFL to become the cultural mainstay that it is today. In the 1960s, baseball was still America’s go-to sport. But by the 1970s, the NFL was king. 

This was, in part, due to the popularity of Staubach. 

The man who became nicknamed “Captain America,” led Dallas to two Super Bowl wins and finished his career with 23 game-winning drives. Most of America already had a level of admiration for Staubach after he won the Heisman Trophy and then served four years in the U.S. Navy. 

The rise of highlight reels on television, mixed with the clean-cut image and stellar play of Staubach turned the Cowboys into the most popular team in America. It became exceptionally common for the Dallas Thanksgiving game to be one of the highest-rated games of the NFL season. 

Why Other Teams Don’t Play Every Thanksgiving

Only one NFL team hasn’t played on Thanksgiving—the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Cincinnati Bengals, Carolina Panthers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers have each played in one game and the Houston Texans have played two. 

All other teams have played at least three games on Thanksgiving. 

The Lions (obviously) have a substantial lead with 84 games, followed by the Cowboys (56), Green Bay Packers and Bears (37 each). 

As we’ve established, the Lions and Cowboys bought into/created a marketing scheme that was an absolute home run. Then Dallas rose to prominence as they began playing on Thanksgiving Day, which eventually made the game must-see television. 

At this point, with three games on Thanksgiving Day, it’s only a matter of time before the Jaguars end up playing. But the prevailing wisdom is that the league attempts to schedule high-profile, ratings-drawing matchups.

In 2024, the three games are as follows: 

Chicago Bears @ Detroit Lions 12:30 p.m. ET

New York Giants @ Dallas Cowboys 4:30 p.m. ET

Miami Dolphins @ Green Bay Packers 8:20 p.m. ET

Memorable Thanksgiving Moments in Cowboys and Lions History

There have been plenty of impressive performances and moments on Thanksgiving Day. 

In 1997, Lions running back Barry Sanders rushed for 167 yards and three touchdowns in a 55-20 win over the Bears. It was the 11th consecutive 100-yard rushing game for Sanders, which set an NFL record.

The following year, in 1998, the Lions benefitted from an officiating blunder. The Pittsburgh Steelers tied the score at 16 with four seconds left, forcing overtime. During the coin toss, Jerome Bettis called tails, but the referee heard heads. When the coin landed, it was tails and the Lions drove the field and kicked a game-winning field goal. 

In 2013, the Lions used Packers guard Josh Sitton’s comments as bulletin board material and soundly walloped their NFC North foe. Detroit defeated Green Bay 40-10 behind 300 yards and three touchdowns from Matt Stafford. 

The “Thanksgiving Day Massacre” was perhaps the best Detroit performance ever, let alone on Thanksgiving. The 1962 Packers were 10-0 to start the year, fresh off a championship the season prior. “Night Train” Lane and Dick LeBeau led a nasty Lions defense to a 26-14 victory over Bart Starr and the Packers. Stats get a bit murky back in the day, but it is believed that the Lions recorded 11 sacks that day—including six from Roger Brown. 

The 1994 season saw the Cowboys meet the Packers on Thanksgiving Day. Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman was injured, so in stepped backup Jason Garrett (who would go on to coach Dallas). Garrett was pressured early and often by Hall of Famer Reggie White in the first half, but the Cowboys rebounded to outscore Green Bay 36-14 in the second half to win 42-31.

In 1980, Dallas decimated the Seattle Seahawks 51-7. The year prior, Staubach and Co. fell just short to the Houston Oilers, who declared themselves “Texas’ Team,” after the game. Still bitter, Dallas—now led by Danny White at quarterback—ran all over Seattle. The Cowboys forced seven turnovers, posted six sacks and didn’t allow Seattle to score until the final minutes of regulation. The 44-point margin is the largest margin of victory in Thanksgiving Day history.

Dallas was on a four-game Thanksgiving losing streak entering the 1990 game. Tom Landry had lost his final three Thanksgiving Day games and then first-year head coach Jimmy Johnson lost 27-0 to the Philadelphia Eagles in the “Bounty Bowl.” At just 4-7 entering the game, it seemed like Dallas might lose its fifth straight Turkey Day game. However, this game ended up being the moment that many point to as the jumping off point for the Cowboys’ dynasty in the 1990s. Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith led Dallas to a comeback win over Washington. 

The Role of Television in Thanksgiving Football Tradition

RCA president David Sarnoff revealed the first commercial TV broadcast at the 1939 World’s Fair. In October of that year, a game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Brooklyn Dodgers was broadcast. By the end of the decade, there were likely a few hundred televisions in homes across the U.S.

Commercial broadcasting was authorized by the FCC in 1941. The first commercial aired on NBC and bagged the network a whopping $7. 

After World War II, television became more mainstream in the United States. Harry Truman delivered the first television address from the White House on Oct. 5, 1947. Howdy Doody first aired later that same year. 

The following year, in 1948, the NFL championship game was broadcast for the first time. 

In 1964, more than 1 million Americans purchased color televisions. Three years later they would be tuning in to watch the AFL-NFL World Championship between the Packers and Chiefs on NBC and CBS. 

ABC agreed to televise a weekly Monday night game in 1970 and it immediately became (and remained) one of the most popular programs in the nation. 

As we previously covered, the rise in television usage and the rise of the Cowboys go hand-in-hand. As more eyes were looking to the NFL, Dallas began a decade of dominance, winning 105 games and two Super Bowls in the 1970s. 

The NFL’s Expanding Thanksgiving Slate: The Addition of a Third Game

There were plenty of other franchises who were champing at the bit to get in on the Thanksgiving pie, so to speak. 

With Dallas and Detroit locked in yearly, there were only two other franchises who could get featured. Plus, the NFL wanted to get even more eyes on the games—and television networks were more than willing to throw some money around to get another game. 

So in 2006 the NFL added a third game on Thanksgiving—which is played during primetime. The game originally was broadcast on the NFL Network until NBC took it over in 2012. Now, CBS, FOX and NBC each air one game on Thanksgiving. While there are technically no conference requirements for the games, the FOX games end up being two NFC teams. 

Since 2022, the Thanksgiving games have been grouped together and called the “John Madden Thanksgiving Celebration.” A special coin is used during the games (one side features Madden’s silhouette and the other features a turducken), players wear custom jersey patches and there are special stencils along the sidelines. 

In 2023, the NFL began a new tradition—the Black Friday game. Streaming on Amazon, the game kicks off on Friday afternoon. It was the first time the NFL played a Friday night game on a non-holiday (or in December) since 1986. 

Predictions for the Future of Thanksgiving Football

The NFL is a money maker. It’s as simple as that. But, it seems difficult to squeeze in a fourth game on Thanksgiving Day, especially if you want just one game in each time slot. 

And that was always kind of the point with Thanksgiving Day games—you wanted the entire country to watch two teams at a time. 

However, the NFL isn’t looking to make teams more popular anymore—because the league is the most popular attraction in the nation. So there’s always a chance that we get more games added, particularly in the first two time slots (12:30 p.m. ET and 4:30 p.m. ET).