Netflix and Football, Baby: The Rams Get Their Turkey Day Moment in the New NFL Streaming Era

Now let me tell you something about football and tradition, because that's what we're really talking about here when the NFL goes and puts the Los Angeles Rams on Netflix for a Thanksgiving Eve showdown with the Green Bay Packers. This isn't just about some streaming service getting exclusive rights to football games. This is about how the game we love keeps evolving, keeps finding new ways to reach people, keeps staying relevant in a world that's changing faster than a safety blitzing through a gap. And you know what? I love it. I absolutely love it.

For decades, Thanksgiving football meant one thing: you knew exactly where you were going to be and what you were going to watch. You sat down with your family, your turkey was getting cold on your plate, and you watched the Detroit Lions play their traditional morning game followed by the Dallas Cowboys in the afternoon. That's been the backbone of Thanksgiving football since 1934 for the Lions and 1966 for the Cowboys. Those games are sacred. They're woven into the fabric of American tradition the way turkey and stuffing are woven into Thanksgiving dinner itself. But here's the thing about traditions in sports: they don't stay frozen in time. They grow. They adapt. They find new expressions.

What the NFL is doing with this Netflix package is bold, and I don't mean bold in a reckless way. I mean bold in the way that shows you understand that football fans exist everywhere now, not just in front of cable boxes or network television sets. You've got people streaming games on their phones during lunch breaks. You've got fans in different countries watching NFL football at hours that would make normal people question their life choices, and I respect that dedication with every fiber of my being. The league looked at this reality and said, "We need to make sure football reaches these people on one of the biggest football weekends of the year." That's smart thinking.

Now, the Rams getting this Netflix spotlight against Green Bay on Thanksgiving Eve is particularly interesting because you're looking at a matchup between two franchises with wildly different trajectories and histories. The Packers are one of the oldest, most storied franchises in professional football. Lambeau Field is sacred ground. When you talk about Vince Lombardi, when you talk about Aaron Rodgers, when you talk about the frozen tundra and games played in conditions that would make a polar bear reconsider his life choices, you're talking about Green Bay. That's one of the two or three most iconic franchises in NFL history. Then you look at the Rams, who've moved more than most families moving between apartments, who built this incredibly talented roster, won a Super Bowl just a few years back, and have been trying to capture that lightning in a bottle again ever since.

This is the thing that makes sports beautiful though. You don't get to choose your history or where you come from, but you get to choose what you do right now. The Rams are a team trying to prove something. They're a team that's had injuries derail their season multiple times in recent years. They're a team that spent big and had to live with the consequences. But they're also a team with championship DNA because they've won it all in recent memory. When they step onto that field on Thanksgiving Eve against Aaron Rodgers and the Packers, they're not playing just one of the most iconic franchises in sports. They're playing in front of a potential global audience on a platform that reaches people who might not have watched them any other way.

Think about what that means for a second. I've been watching football for more years than I care to count, and I've seen the game go through transformations that would've seemed impossible to the fans of the 1970s or 1980s. We've gone from three channels showing football to having every conceivable way to watch the game available at almost any moment. We've gone from Monday Night Football being this exotic, revolutionary thing that happened once a week to having games on virtually every night of the week. The game has survived and thrived through all of this because fundamentally, what people love about football hasn't changed. They love the strategy, the athleticism, the drama, the narratives that write themselves across the season.

The Netflix package isn't replacing Thanksgiving football tradition. It's adding to it. It's saying that in addition to the Lions and Cowboys carrying their torch, there's going to be this new tradition too. This streaming era tradition that recognizes that football exists in a different media landscape now. Five games on Netflix throughout the season means that people who maybe cut the cord years ago, people who live outside the United States, people who just prefer to watch their sports through streaming platforms, they all get to be part of the NFL experience in a way they might not have been able to before. That's not a loss for football fans. That's a win.

What gets me excited about this is thinking about how it expands the Rams' reach. Los Angeles is a massive media market, sure, but it's also a market with tons of competition. You've got the Lakers, the Dodgers, the Angels, the Kings, the Galaxy. You've got entertainment options that don't exist in any other city. When the Rams get a Netflix game on Thanksgiving Eve, they're not just reaching the football fans in Southern California who already follow them closely. They're reaching Netflix's millions of subscribers worldwide who might watch casually, who might be curious, who might be introducing themselves to the NFL for the first time. That's the kind of exposure money can't really buy in the traditional sense because it's coming through a different pipeline entirely.

The Packers bring a certain gravitas to this moment too. You don't get to play on Netflix on Thanksgiving Eve against Aaron Rodgers unless you're playing somebody special. The NFL could've put any matchup in that slot, but they chose Rams and Packers. That tells you the league sees both of these teams as worth the premium placement, worth the spotlight, worth making a statement about. The Packers are the more storied franchise historically, absolutely, but the Rams are the team that's willing to swing big, willing to spend big, willing to go for it now. That's a fascinating contrast for a streaming audience that might not know the nuances of NFL history.

Here's what I keep coming back to though: this is about football being alive and growing and refusing to be confined by the old ways of doing business. The teams and leagues and networks that figure out how to reach fans where they are, how to serve content when and how people want to consume it, those are the ones who thrive. The NFL has always been good at this. They understood Monday night football before Monday night football was considered essential. They understood Sunday night football. They understood Thursday night football. Now they understand that there are millions of people who want their football on a streaming service, and they're building a package that's going to test out that audience on one of the most important weekends of the football calendar.

For fans, here's why this matters. This means more opportunities to watch football. This means the sport you love is working to be accessible in the ways that fit your life. This means that the Rams and Packers are going to get to showcase themselves to an audience that might be entirely new, and that kind of exposure can build fan bases that last for decades. This is the future of sports media playing out in real time, and it's happening with football leading the way.