Lions–Packers: Thanksgiving's Most Frequent Guest Meets Its Permanent Host

Detroit has hosted a Thanksgiving game in all 60 seasons from 1966 through 2025. Green Bay has been the visitor 10 of those times — and eight of the ten have come since 2001, more than any other franchise in that span.

The permanent host

Across 60 Thanksgivings from 1966 to 2025, Detroit hosted a game in every single one. Thirty-six for thirty-six in the pre-2002 era, twenty-four for twenty-four since. Dallas is nearly as reliable — 34 and 24 — but "nearly" is the operative word, because Dallas missed 1975 and 1977 when the St. Louis Cardinals took the slot. Detroit has never missed.

That makes the Lions the only franchise in football with a permanent, unbroken claim on a specific calendar date. Every year, before the schedule makers place a single other game, one line is already written: Detroit hosts on Thanksgiving. The only open question is who visits.

The most frequent guest — and the modern-era flip

Across the full 1966–2025 span, the visitor list at Detroit looks like this:

Guest	Thanksgiving visits to Detroit
Chicago	12
Green Bay	10
Minnesota	5
Kansas City	4
Denver	3
Buffalo	3
New England	3

Chicago leads. But that total is a fossil. Split the era at 2001 — the year Green Bay's modern run of invitations begins — and the two halves describe different leagues:

1966–2000 (35 seasons)		2001–2025 (25 seasons)
Chicago	7	Green Bay	8
Kansas City	4	Chicago	5
Minnesota	3	New England	2
Denver	3	Houston	2
Green Bay	2	Minnesota	2

Green Bay doesn't even make the top four of the first 35 years. It leads the next 25 outright.

Two visits in thirty-five seasons — 1984 and 1986 — then eight in twenty-five: 2001, 2003, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2023, and 2025.

Laid out on a timeline, the two teams almost trade places. Chicago owns the left half of the chart; Green Bay owns the right.

The Packers have generally enjoyed the trip: 7–3 at Detroit on Thanksgiving, including a 44–40 shootout in 1986 and Detroit's 40–10 rout in 2013, the most lopsided result in the holiday series.

The every-other-year rhythm

Look at the intervals between Green Bay's visits and a habit appears that isn't visible in the totals:

From → To	Gap
1984 → 1986	2 years
1986 → 2001	15 years
2001 → 2003	2 years
2003 → 2007	4 years
2007 → 2009	2 years
2009 → 2011	2 years
2011 → 2013	2 years
2013 → 2023	10 years
2023 → 2025	2 years

Seven of the nine gaps are exactly two years. When Green Bay is in the Thanksgiving rotation, they come every other year almost without exception — and when they're out, they're out for a decade or more.

There are only two states: in the rotation, or in the wilderness. Chicago filled most of the 2014–2022 drought, visiting in 2014, 2018, 2019, and 2021.

So when do they go back?

Green Bay has visited in 2023 and 2025. If the two-year rhythm holds — and it has held through seven of nine intervals — the next invitation is 2027.

The alternative is that the current run ends the way the last two did, abruptly, and Detroit spends the late 2020s hosting somebody else. History says that's how it usually ends. History also says you get about two years' notice, and right now there's no sign of it.

What Thanksgiving does to the rivalry's schedule profile

By primetime share, Lions–Packers looks ordinary. Since 2002 the two have met 48 times with 10 of those in a night window — 20.8%, which is almost exactly the divisional average of 20.3%. Compare that to Packers–Bears at 41.7%, and Green Bay's other big rivalry looks like the neglected one.

Except Thanksgiving games aren't primetime. They kick off in the early afternoon, and they're one of the most-watched regular-season windows the NFL has — a standalone national broadcast with no competition on the dial. Not one of the seven Lions–Packers Thanksgiving meetings appears in the primetime column, because none of them was played at night.

Count both, and the picture inverts:

	Meetings	Primetime	Thanksgiving	Total national standalone
Lions–Packers	48	10	7	17 (35.4%)

More than a third of Lions–Packers meetings since 2002 have been played in a standalone national window — the rivalry just gets there by a different road. Packers–Bears earns its exposure at night; Lions–Packers earns a big chunk of its exposure on a Thursday afternoon in November when the entire country is home.

Anyone measuring rivalry importance by primetime count alone is undercounting this one by roughly 40%.

Two stadiums, two kinds of spotlight

Since 2002 the rivalry has split its venues perfectly evenly: 24 games at Lambeau Field, 24 at Ford Field. Exactly what the format guarantees.

The national windows are not split evenly at all.

	Primetime games	Thanksgiving games	Total national windows
At Green Bay	7	0	7
At Detroit	3	7	10

Seven of the ten primetime meetings have been played at Lambeau. Only three at Ford Field — and Detroit's three are all recent, in 2015, 2016, and 2024.

So the same rivalry gets sold two entirely different ways depending on which stadium it's in. In Green Bay it's a night game: Lambeau under the lights in December, the most reliably photogenic setting in American football. In Detroit it's Thanksgiving afternoon, indoors, with the whole country at the table.

Neither team is short of national exposure. They just get it through different doors — and the doors don't swap. Every one of the seven Thanksgiving meetings was at Detroit, because they must be. Green Bay's compensation for never hosting this rivalry on the holiday is that when the league wants it at night, it usually wants it at Lambeau.

The ten night games spread across every window — four Sunday, three Monday, three Thursday — with no Week 1 Kickoff appearance.

Where else it lands: Week 17

The other scheduling habit is at the far end of the calendar:

• Week 17: eight times — the single most common week for this matchup
• Week 14: six times
• Weeks 2, 3, 12, and 13: four times each
• Week 18: twice

Ten of the 48 meetings have come in Week 17 or 18. Combine that with the seven Thanksgiving games and roughly a third of this rivalry is played after American Thanksgiving — a late-season fixture in a way Packers–Bears, which the league loves to open with, is not.

That's a coherent piece of schedule design: Detroit and Green Bay are a November-and-January rivalry, positioned where NFC North races get decided.

The series itself

	1966–2001	2002–2025
Meetings	72	48
Green Bay wins	34	32
Detroit wins	34	16
Ties	4	0

Across the Super Bowl era: 120 meetings, Green Bay 66, Detroit 50, with four ties. All four came before 2002; ties remain possible under the current overtime rules, but this rivalry hasn't produced one in over two decades.

The first column is one of the most evenly matched rivalry records in football. Thirty-six years, dead level at 34–34. The second column is not: Green Bay has won two of every three meetings this century.

If you're building a schedule

The Lions–Packers rules that six decades of precedent imply:

1. Detroit hosts on Thanksgiving. Always. Sixty for sixty. This isn't a preference, it's a fixed point.
2. Green Bay is the modern default guest — seven visits since 2002, more than anyone.
3. Night games belong at Lambeau. Seven of ten primetime meetings have been in Green Bay, despite an even home-and-away split.
4. Favor the late calendar. Week 17 more than any other week, with Thanksgiving itself doing the November work.

Those constraints are exactly what a real schedule maker starts from — fixed points first, then everything else arranged around them. Our mock schedule builder enforces the structural rules of the NFL calendar, Thanksgiving included, so you can build a season that could actually exist and then see how close you got when the real one lands in May.

Detroit will host on Thanksgiving in 2027. That much has been true for sixty years. The only real question, as always, is who they invite.

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Game data from MockSlate's NFL slot history dataset, built from nflverse/nfldata (2002–2025) and FiveThirtyEight's historical NFL game file (1966–2001).

MockSlate is an independent fan tool and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the National Football League or any NFL team. Team names are used for identification purposes only.