Real NFL Rivalries vs the Ones TV Keeps Selling

Every network has a graphics package with the word rivalry in it, and it gets rolled out for about half the schedule. Most weeks it is lying.

A real rivalry has a few things a promo department can't fake. The teams play often, usually twice a year. The games have cost somebody a season. There is at least one moment one fan base refuses to discuss. And the dislike runs in both directions. Miss two of those and you have a good matchup, not a rivalry.

The Ones With Real Scar Tissue

Bears and Packers is the baseline. They first met in 1921, they have played each other more than any two teams in league history, and the series is old enough that the all-time lead changed hands in 2017 for the first time in decades. Aaron Rodgers once scored at Soldier Field and told the crowd he still owned them. It went out on national television. Chicago has not forgotten.

Cowboys and Eagles have Thanksgiving 1989, when Dallas accused Buddy Ryan of putting bounties on Troy Aikman and the Cowboys' kicker. The rematch in Philadelphia that December featured a stadium full of people throwing snowballs at Jimmy Johnson. That is a rivalry.

Steelers and Ravens have been playing two of the most physical games on the schedule every year since the Ray Lewis era. Their AFC title game after the 2008 season turned on a Troy Polamalu interception returned for a touchdown, and Pittsburgh went on to win the Super Bowl. The Ravens only exist because Art Modell moved Cleveland's team to Baltimore in 1996, which means Browns fans get to hate both of them.

Jets and Patriots started with a napkin. In January 2000, Bill Belichick was set to take over as head coach of the Jets and quit a day later with a handwritten note. He spent the next two decades in New England beating them. The Butt Fumble on Thanksgiving 2012 was just the comic relief.

No Division Required

Cowboys and 49ers prove you don't need to share a division. The Catch in January 1982. Three straight NFC title games in the early '90s, with the Super Bowl effectively on the line each time. Terrell Owens celebrating on the star at midfield in Dallas in 2000, then trying it again and getting flattened. San Francisco knocking Dallas out of the playoffs in back-to-back Januaries not long ago. These teams don't see each other much. When they do, it is personal.

The Ones TV Keeps Selling

The most common fake is the quarterback duel. Two stars, one prime-time window, a split-screen promo. Every year some young passer gets billed as the next great rival for whichever star the network wants to sell that season. It might be a great game. But quarterbacks never share the field, and one or two meetings do not make a rivalry.

Then there are the family stories. The Harbaugh brothers coaching against each other in Super Bowl XLVII and the Kelce brothers lining up on opposite sides in Super Bowl LVII were great television. Donna Kelce wore a jersey stitched half and half. Nobody in either building hated anybody. That is a feel-good movie, not a feud.

Geography gets oversold too. Two teams in the same state, different conferences, meeting once every few years, with a promo built around a trophy most fans couldn't name. Dallas and Houston. The Florida teams. Shared highways are not shared history. And any national-window game involving the Cowboys gets the rivalry treatment because Dallas draws ratings, not because some AFC team circled the date.

The One-Way Rivalry

The hardest case is Kansas City and Buffalo. Between January 2021 and January 2025, the Chiefs ended the Bills' season four times. One of those was the 13-seconds game, when Buffalo took the lead late and Kansas City still had time to tie it and win in overtime. Another turned on a late Buffalo field goal that sailed wide right, a phrase western New York already knew too well.

That is real pain. But it mostly runs one way. Buffalo hates Kansas City. Kansas City spent those years busy going to Super Bowls. A rivalry where only one side loses sleep is a grudge. Grudges count. They just count differently.

The network can schedule the game. It can't schedule the hate. That part shows up on its own, usually in the fourth quarter, usually from the upper deck.