In the clearest expression of disapproval that the NFL annually sends to rebuilding franchises, five teams are not scheduled to see a single minute of prime-time football this season.
This season’s list includes the New York Jets, Las Vegas Raiders, Miami Dolphins, Tennessee Titans and Arizona Cardinals.
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This is the second straight season the Titans haven’t had a single game slated for prime time, as they were shut out in 2025 along with the Cleveland Browns and New Orleans Saints.
Interestingly, it sets up a scenario where the past two No. 1 picks in the NFL Draft — the Titans’ Cam Ward and Raiders’ Fernando Mendoza — will have gone through their rookie season without playing in prime time. It also would mean that Ward would have been iced out of prime time for the first two years of his career.
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While the league never overtly admits it, the prime-time freeze out is often absorbed as a message to team ownership about getting organizations into a competitive plateau from one season to the next. The Jets, Raiders, Titans and Cardinals all went 3-14 last season while settling into last place in their respective divisions. The outlier is the Dolphins, who went 7-10 — but then followed that mediocre performance up by effectively gutting most of the team this offseason.
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Interestingly — but perhaps not coincidentally — those teams have comprised five of the six longest betting odds to win the Super Bowl for much of this offseason, with the Browns often mixed into the bottom six. I’d never suggest the NFL considers sports wagering interest when it comes to how the prime-time schedule is stacked up, but it certainly doesn’t help that ancillary pipeline of revenue when you’re showcasing what oddsmakers believe are the worst franchises.
Here’s a quick snapshot of how the teams ended up getting shut out:
New York Jets
You’ll never convince me this isn’t a continued echo of the NFL’s dissatisfaction over scheduling the Jets for 11 total prime-time/flex/international games in 2023 and 2024 — only to watch the franchise sink to an 8-26 record over that two-year span. Frankly, it takes a lot for the league to ice a team in its No. 1 media market, but there doesn’t appear to be a lot of faith in the Aaron Glenn and Geno Smith-led franchise this season. Maybe that changes in 2027 if the Jets meet low expectations and end up with Arch Manning on the roster in 2027.
Las Vegas Raiders
The Raiders got three prime-time games last season with head coach Pete Carroll, offensive coordinator Chip Kelly and newly acquired quarterback Geno Smith, suggesting there would be some juice to squeeze during the season, particularly with one of college football’s most exciting running backs — Ashton Jeanty — stepping into the backfield. What unfolded was a mess of infighting on the coaching staff and an offense that was atrocious in a massively disappointing campaign. And it looked worse late in the season when the Raiders appeared to have shut down star edge rusher Maxx Crosby late in the season as they were in contention for the first pick in the draft. Even with Fernando Mendoza now in the fold and a revamped coaching staff, I doubt the league was in a hurry to reward the Raiders after last season’s flop.
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Miami Dolphins
The Dolphins got six prime-time/international games last year but managed to muster only a 7-10 season that showcased a roster and quarterback situation in a massive state of decline. The following reboot — with a sweeping out of general manager Chris Grier, head coach Mike McDaniel and quarterback Tua Tagovailoa (among many others) — decimated any inspiration to feature the Dolphins this season. A rebuild that looks like it’s essentially going to the studs and taking almost all of the star power with it doesn’t inspire much confidence of a surprise season. There’s a price to starting over in a fashion that suggests it will be years before another competitive team materializes. And this zero burger in prime time is part of it.
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Tennessee Titans
The Titans are in the midst of a nuclear winter when it comes to the NFL schedule-makers, with only one — one! — prime-time game going all the way back to the 2024 season. The last time Tennessee saw prime time: Week 4 of that season against the Dolphins. The Titans actually won that game 31-12, but they finished 3-14 overall, translating into zero prime-time games in 2025. And when they again went 3-14 in 2025 …well, that’s the snowball effect of a terrible NFL product that leads the league to completely shut you out again in 2026.
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Even the 2025 No. 1 overall pick, Cam Ward, didn’t generate enough confidence last season to throw the Titans a bone with their completely revamped coaching staff. As Ward famously said last season of Tennessee’s on-field performance at one point last season, “We ass.” And “ass” is not the kind of football the NFL likes to put in front of a standalone national audience. Let alone hang on the outlets that pay through the nose to put out prime-time packages.
Arizona Cardinals
After crawling out of the basement from a 4-13 record in 2023 to a more competitive 8-9 in 2024, the NFL awarded the Cardinals with two prime-time games in 2025 — only to see the entire franchise regress horribly back to a 3-14 mark. That debacle included benching quarterback Kyler Murray for most of the season in favor of an extremely unsexy Jacoby Brissett, who went 1-11 in his 12 starts.
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Well, even with wholesale coaching staff changes, the quickest way to get any shot at prime-time games yanked is to commit to the previous season’s 1-11 journeyman starter …who appears to be a placeholder until the Cardinals can reboot with a new young quarterback. Even in the best of times, the Cardinals are a tough sell to a national audience, much like the Titans. Reverting back to being a messy reboot at head coach and (eventually) quarterback is easy math for the NFL. And it subtracts any motivation to put the operation into prime time.
