A shade under five months before the season is to begin - 142 days, to be exact - the National Football League unveiled its 2015 schedule on Tuesday night. As with everything the Shield does these days, the release of the schedule came with much fan fare - in a three-hour primetime special opposite the NBA and NHL playoffs. While this fall's opponents and venues have been known for months, Tuesday's reveal filled in the "when" to the "who" and "where," and, as per recent custom, the upcoming season will begin in Foxboro as the defending champion New England Patriots will kick off the season opposite the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday, Sept. 10.
Week 1 concludes with the New York Giants at the Dallas Cowboys on NBC's Sunday Night Football (the fourth time in five years Dallas and New York have met in Week 1) and with a Monday Night doubleheader featuring Philadelphia at Atlanta and Minnesota at San Francisco.
Rather than a week-by-week parsing of a schedule no one can credibly predict, here's a rough guess at the biggest games of weeks two through 17:
Week 2: Seattle at Green Bay (NBC Sunday Night Football)
Week 3: Kansas City at Green Bay - a rematch of Super Bowl I (Monday Night Football)
Week 4: Baltimore at Pittsburgh (Thursday)
Week 5: New England at Dallas (4:25 ET Sunday, CBS)
Week 6: New England at Indianapolis (NBC Sunday Night Football)
Week 7: Seattle at San Francisco (Thursday)
Week 8: Seattle at Dallas (4:25 ET Sunday, CBS)
Week 9: Philadelphia at Dallas (NBC Sunday Night Football)
Week 10: New England at NY Giants (4:25 ET Sunday, CBS)
Week 11: Denver at Chicago (1 p.m. ET Sunday, CBS)
Week 12: New England at Denver (NBC Sunday Night Football)
Week 13: Green Bay at Detroit (Thursday)
Week 14: Dallas at Green Bay (4:25 ET Sunday, FOX)
Week 15: Denver at Pittsburgh (4:25 ET Sunday, CBS)
Week 16: Green Bay at Arizona (4:25 ET Sunday, FOX)
Week 17: Seattle at Arizona (4:25 ET Sunday, FOX)