The primetime games for the opening weekend as well as the Thanksgiving games have been announced.

The season opens Thursday September 10 with the Steelers hosting the Titans. The Sunday night game will be the Bears at the Packers. and the Monday Night Football doubleheader has the Bills at the Patriots and Chargers at the Raiders.

Thanksgiving has ther Packers at the Lions, then the Cowboys hosting the Raiders topped off with the Giants at the Broncos.

Would the Bills be on the opening Monday night without T.O.?

Um, no.

The Bills-pats game has some intrigue with TO plus Brady's first game back after the injury. But the rest of these games (other than Pitt-Tenn) are just snooze-inducing. What the hell have the Raiders done to warrant these two primo national TV audiences? And while it seems cruel to take away the Detroit's Turkey Day game, how many more stinkers do NFL fans have to endure?

Great, another chance to show America why keeping Dick Jauron was a stupid idea. The unintentional comedy factor of watching him get outcoached by Belichick is always through the roof.

They should just get rid of the second Monday night game. The only reason it's the Raiders and Chargers is because they're in the Western time zone. The home team has to be the Raiders, Chargers, 49ers or Seahawks in the Western time zone (or Cardinals or Broncos in the Mountain zone). They can't start a game back East at 10:15 pm. I assume they have tentative schedules now (which become official next month) and the other teams listed above are either on the road in Week 1 or can't play Monday for some other reason.

IIRC, the Week 1 DH makes up for the fact that there's no MNF game Week 17.

As for the Thanksgiving games, I guess the NFL wants people to actually spend time with their families this year.

Can we just fast forward to September please? I so miss my Sunday NFL.

FYI Guys (and Gals)....

The rest of the 2009 NFL Schedule will be released Tuesday, April 14th at 2PM....

I'm sure there are a bunch of ya'll that can't wait!

Updated 4/9/09: NFL just moved the announcement to 7pm; first time ever making it a "Primetime Event"....
Looks like they're getting back at ESPN for posting it on their program schedule last week!

Three more hours until we find out who T.O. in T.O. will play when his Bills play the second of 5 annual regular season games here in Toronto. The good news already is that ticket prices are dropping on average 17% compared to last year's ridiculous rates. Still obscene with the cheapest seat being $99.00 and some tickets as high as $475.00 - but it does sound like most upper deck seats are coming down in price compared to last year.

Hey Blueraider - that should mean you will see a refund of a few bucks on the 8 game Toronto package you bought!

Well last year Bills fans were mad that Toronto got the Dolphins game. This year the Dolphins will have to play in the cold in front of REAL Bills fans at the Ralph on Sunday November 29th. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

I'm not sure Bills fans in Buffalo will be thrilled though that just 4 days later Toronto gets the Bills in Prime Time. Yup - Thursday night December 3rd at 8:20PM against another division rival - this time the Jets here at the Rogers Centre in Toronto on NFL Network across the USA. The Bills only scheduled 'home' night game this year.

Fine wit' me...just waiting to see what the price reduction is.

Jets...fine...I guess...sux that they took another division opponent...but it's the one Bills fans care the least about(imho)......primetime...I'm stunned they didn't do that last year.

I'll be making the ride up anyhow battling the *&^%ing traffic on the QEW to get to the Rogers Centre. Should still be fun.

Hey BlueRaider
At least you should be against the flow of traffic coming into Toronto on a Thursday with all the rush hour traffic heading west on the QEW. It looks like the $170.00 upper deck seats have dropped to $155.00 - which if I remember were the seats you have. The upper half of the upper deck has dropped to $99.00 so when single ticket sales start on Tuesday - I'll grab a pair of those since this year I do not have the second ticket with my friend Jim - who like you bought a pair for the full 8 game series through 2012. I believe I have the tickets for 2010 and 2012 regular season games with him - already paid for - LOL

Apparently rumor has it that Rogers is trying to get a second game up here for each of 2010, 2011 and 2012 regular seasons - which I would assume would mean hosting at least one of the games during the CFL season - conflicting to an extent with the CFL Argos whose season ends in November. Clearly they have intentionally avoided doing that so far with these post Grey Cup December dates for the Bills' games here.

For whatever reason - there have always been a fair number of Dolphin fans up here which was reflected with about 1/4 of the crowd cheering for the Dolphins at last year's 'home' game up here for the Bills. I don't get a sense that there are nearly as many Jets fans up here - so I suspect the Bills will get more of a home field advantage for the game this season. And I think the night time game means more beer consumption - which in turn would mean more 'enthusiastic' fans - but still nothing like the over the top electric atmosphere the last couple of Monday night games at the Ralph.