NFL Denies Primetime Slots to Rookies Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders

The NFL allocates at least one primetime game to the team which drafts the best player with the first overall pick, however, that is not the case this year.

NFL Denies Primetime Slots to Rookies Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders

Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders (Image Credits: AP/IMAGO)

One of the biggest selling points for the NFL is to showcase the talents of freshly minted college athletes after the Draft. The way the league does this is by allocating primetime games to the teams that drafted the most hyped athletes or the top picks.

Usually, when a quarterback is among the top picks, his team is almost always guaranteed a few primetime games. It has become a custom of sorts. However, this year, the league has taken a different approach as the two most hyped quarterbacks from the Class of 2025 have zero primetime games.

Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders were the highlight of the 2025 Draft, with the media focusing on them over other prospects. Ward was picked first overall by the Tennessee Titans, and Sanders fell to the fifth round before being picked by the Cleveland Browns.

While it is understandable to an extent why the league abstained from allotting primetime games to Shedeur Sanders, it is hard to believe that they did not deem Cam Ward worthy of even one primetime game. The recently released schedule of the 2025-26 season showcased a grim reality for the two most popular prospects of the 2025 Draft class.

The decision seems to be a slap on the face for the Titans, a franchise that ended with a 3-14 record last season. Despite having made upgrades to their roster, it is clear that the league and its schedulers are not convinced that featuring Ward on primetime will make much of a difference. The exact reason cannot be pinpointed at this time.

However, in the case of Shedeur Sanders, there is an explanation. He was the 144th overall pick and is now part of a franchise that has five quarterbacks on its roster. Apart from Sanders, there’s Deshaun Watson, Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, and Dillon Gabriel. There is a quarterback competition brewing within the organization, and there is no guarantee that Sanders will get an opportunity to start.

Cam Ward is the second quarterback in the last decade to have been selected first overall and be featured on 0 primetime games

Such an incident has happened only once in the last decade. In 2011, the Carolina Panthers chose Cam Newton with their first overall pick, and in the subsequent season, they were featured on 0 national primetime games. The good thing is that Newton went on to lead the Panthers to a Super Bowl and became an amazing quarterback in the NFL.

Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders
Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders (Image Credits: L-via IMAGO, R-via Open Source)

NFL VP of Broadcast Planning, Mike North, is one of the many people responsible for planning the schedule. After the schedule was released, he appeared on the Ross Tucker Podcast to clarify the reason for Ward and the Titans having 0 primetime games.

It wasn’t intentional. I mean, you know…we’ve probably got a dozen schedules in front of the commissioner last week. Some of those had the Titans on MNF. Some of them had the Titans in the TBD pool for Saturday for the NFL Network. It wasn’t a conscious effort going in. Maximum zero Titans primes. It was more about a mixture of all the rest of what has to go into the soup.

North made it clear that this was not done on purpose. From the perspective of a broadcast planner, “You don’t draft your way into primetime, you play your way into primetime.” The only way Ward and the Titans stand a chance of getting featured on primetime from next season onwards is by showing that they are good enough for it.

The same is applicable for Sanders and the Browns. Firstly, Cleveland needs to determine who will be the starting quarterback. Deshaun Watson has been ruled out of the upcoming season, and Joe Flacco is likely on the roster to play the role of a backup veteran who teaches the rookies and Kenny Pickett how to improve. The battle for the starter’s role in Cleveland is really between Pickett, Sanders, and Gabriel.

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