From Russell Wilson revisiting Sean Payton to the annual Chiefs-Bills heartbreak, here are NFL’s 15 best grudge matches
As the NFL announced its 2024 regular-season schedule Wednesday night, fans tuned in to find out: When will their teams face their biggest rivals? When will the star player who left — or, in some cases, got away — come back home?
From discarded players to discarded coaches, playoff pain to good old regular-season heartbreak, the grudge-match lineup is deep this season. We broke down the top 15 games you won’t want to miss, with a chronological tiering by how deep the grudge hits:
Tier 3: The Sting
Week 1 — Dallas Cowboys at Cleveland Browns, 4:25 p.m. ET, Sept. 8
The Cowboys have a star receiver in CeeDee Lamb. But as they’ve yet to pay their receiver a megacontract, and don’t seem rushed to do so before the season opener, the franchise had salary-cap space to keep Amari Cooper beside Lamb a bit longer. The Cowboys also received plenty of criticism for settling for a fifth-round draft pick in exchange for the salary of a player who has since averaged 1,205 yards and seven touchdowns per year with Cleveland despite the rotating cast of quarterbacks that have replaced Deshaun Watson amid his suspension and injuries the past two seasons. While Watson’s health could compromise Cooper’s rematch with his old team, he’s shown the ability to produce with or without Watson.
Week 1 — Los Angeles Rams at Detroit Lions, 8:20 p.m. ET, Sept. 8
Jared Goff already had his marquee first matchup against the Rams and head coach Sean McVay, who deemed Goff insufficient as his quarterback. After Goff quarterbacked the Lions to a 24-23 wild-card win over the Rams in January, he gets his next revenge round: a chance to remind McVay that not only did he advance to the NFC championship game without him, but also the newly minted $53 million a year quarterback convinced another team he was worth the financial investment. Realistically, both quarterback and coach found a better fit than each other. But McVay’s decision to part with Goff after they advanced to a Super Bowl together will still linger in this prime-time matchup.
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