When will the 2022 NFL season schedule be announced?

Even though the NFL is in the middle of its offseason, plenty is happening around the league. The NFL Draft will take place on April 28, 2022, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Usually, the NFL releases its regular season schedule before the draft, but this year the league will release its schedule after the draft. According to NBC Sports, the NFL will likely release the 2022 schedule in the second week of May, within the range of Tuesday, May 10 to Thursday, May 12.

Last season, the NFL debuted its 18-game regular season, where each team still had a one-week bye during the stretch of the regular season. The league also reduced its preseason slate of games from 4 weeks to 3 weeks, with the Super Bowl remaining in the early part of February after a two-week break between the conference championship games and the big game.

The NFL’s most anticipated games early in the 2022 regular season

Although the full NFL regular season schedule will not be released until after the draft, a few marquee games are already set. The 2021/2022 Super Bowl Champion Los Angeles Rams will host Thursday night's season opener.

Other notable season openers include NBC’s Sunday night opener, ESPN’s Monday Night Football opener, and Amazon’s Thursday night schedule (with longtime legendary and former NBC football play-by-play announcer Al Michaels debuting for Amazon).

The NFL will also have its traditional Thanksgiving triple-header of games and late-season Saturday games. The league will also have a slate of Christmas Day games since the holiday falls on a Sunday this year.

The NFL schedule is usually an abrupt announcement in any given year, but with longtime announcers leaving their old networks (e.g., Al Michaels to Amazon, and Troy Aikman/Joe Buck to ESPN’s Monday Night Football) and the debut of Amazon taking American football to a premiere streaming service, this year’s schedule announcement comes with extra flair.

Early NFL futures have the Buffalo Bills as the odds-on favorite to win the Super Bowl at +675odds,s with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers next in line at +800 odds to win the big game. The Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs round out the next tier of favorites to win the championship title at +1000 odds each.