The NFL’s high-profile regular-season finale, a blockbuster matchup between the Vikings and Lions, has many characteristics of a playoff game and is being treated that way by NBC Sports.
The contest, the league’s “Game 272” for the 2024 regular season, will be featured in prime time on Sunday Night Football, and NBC Sports will bring its entire Football Night in America studio crew to Detroit’s Ford Field to help cover the event on-site.
This will mark the first time FNIA will be on-site with its full team for the regular-season finale, and the only non-playoff game it’s done that—outside of season openers and Tom Brady’s 2021 return to New England while playing for the Buccaneers.
The Vikings-Lions game, matching up two 14–2 teams, will decide the NFC North division title, and more importantly, the No. 1 seed in the conference playoffs that brings a first-round bye and home-field advantage. The clash could also be a preview of the NFC championship game. It’s additionally making league history with the most combined wins (28) of any regular-season game, beating two prior instances involving teams with 25 total wins.
The winner of the game, meanwhile, will be just the NFL’s ninth team to finish a regular season with at least 15 wins, while the loser will set another league record for the winningest wild-card team ever.
Earlier this week, Lions coach Dan Campbell called the upcoming game with the Vikings and its primetime placement “fairytale stuff.” The loser of the game will gain the NFC’s No. 5 seed in the playoffs and will have a more uphill fight to reach the Super Bowl, but it is by no means eliminated from contention.
“It’s been there for a while, so certainly this is something we want to do and we’ve had in our minds,” Campbell said Wednesday of the Lions’ Super Bowl aspirations. “[The] division [title] and one-seed and all that, it’s right here in our hands.”
The network’s move to put more personnel and resources into a big regular-season game recalls CBS Sports’ shift to bring its The NFL Today crew to Buffalo for the Chiefs’ Nov. 17 game at the Bills, still Kansas City’s only loss of the season. CBS Sports was rewarded with a massive average viewership of 31.1 million, the NFL’s largest draw of the season until subsequent Thanksgiving Day games.
