The Dallas Cowboys are America’s Team for a reason.
Ranked as the most valuable franchise in the world of sport, worth an estimated $10.1billion, the Cowboys remain a massive draw.
That is, despite the fact they haven’t tasted Super Bowl glory for three decades.
Whether they are good, bad, or downright ugly, they traditionally have most of their games in nationally televised windows.
And once again, the 2025 NFL schedule will put Dallas up in bright lights.
The Cowboys have eight standalone games across the upcoming regular season, including six in prime time, and will kick off the season in what fans believe will be a ‘bloodbath’ against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Despite coming off the back of a disappointing 7-10 finish that saw them miss the playoffs in 2024, the national audience will have plenty of opportunity to watch Dak Prescott and Co.
In fact, only the Kansas City Chiefs have more prime time games scheduled, with seven.
But Dallas’ drawing power on national TV goes even beyond the prime time window, as many of their games have been previously been reserved for the late Sunday afternoon slot.
The NFL’s two TV packages in that window have long been divided up with Fox primarily getting NFC games and CBS getting AFC games.
In recent years, the league has had more flexibility to move games across networks, and the window can often feature the most watched game of the week, even against prime time showcases.
While the Cowboys are no stranger to the 4:25pm slot on Fox, in 2025, the network is going in a new direction.
In an interview with The Athletic this week, Fox Sports executive Michael Mulvihill admitted that the network was actually comfortable with letting go of some Cowboys games in order to diversify the late afternoon window and feature more true contenders.
“Of our 4:25 pm games, only three of them are Cowboys games,” Mulvihill said.
“In other years, we’ve gone looking for five or six Dallas games at 4:25. What we wanted for this year was more AFC, more Philly, but also more Detroit and a little more Washington to try to capitalize on the Jayden Daniels story.
“I think we have a better mix of teams than we’ve had in the past.
“Sometimes we’ve heard exasperation from fans that the Fox 4:25 game is always the Cowboys.
“It’s still gonna be the Cowboys sometimes this year, but you’ll see a little bit more variety in terms of top teams in our 4:25 window.”
Part of Fox’s willingness to shake up its schedule could be down to the fact that the network has fallen behind CBS in the past two years in ratings.
Overall, CBS NFL telecasts averaged 19.2 million viewers across the 2024 season while Fox averaged 18.4 million.
In the late-afternoon national window, CBS averaged 24.3 million viewers while Fox averaged 23.9 million.
The latter also pays the NFL more for their NFC rights package, given the larger markets in the conference.
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But the AFC’s star power, especially at the quarterback position with the likes of Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson, has levelled the playing field.
With an NFC rising star in Washington Commanders QB Daniels, it’s little surprise that Fox are keen to lean into his story in 2025.
But as Mulvihill said, the Cowboys will still feature in the 4:25pm Fox slot on three Sundays — against the Chicago Bears in Week 3, the Commanders in Week 7 and the Eagles in Week 12.
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