Are you ready for some football?
A … Wednesday night party?
That might not roll off the tongue as the original version, but NFL fans need to be prepared for it. After weeks of speculation, the league confirmed on Wednesday that the 2026 season will officially begin on Wednesday, September 9 with the Seattle Seahawks raising a Super Bowl banner at Lumen Field.
The reason? The first NFL regular-season game from Australia will follow on Thursday night, featuring the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers.
To help get your mind ready for “Wednesday Night Football,” here are the potential options for who the Seahawks will host on that night, ranked. Given that the Rams and the 49ers are playing the next day, those two Seattle opponents are not listed.
The Seahawks are confirmed to be playing on Wednesday.
The following day we’ll see two other NFC West teams in action, when the Los Angeles Rams take on the San Francisco 49ers in Australia. That game will kick off in Melbourne around 10:30 a.m. local time, making for a prime-time game here in the United States on Thursday night.
That also means the NFL could begin the season with a pair of NFC West games, sending the Arizona Cardinals north to Lumen Field to being the season. But with Arizona adding a new head coach and moving on from Kyler Murray, the draw might not be there, especially given some other options.
The Dallas Cowboys always draw eyeballs.
However, the Cowboys were featured in the NFL Kickoff game last season, when they made the trip to Lincoln Financial Field to play the Philadelphia Eagles on the night their NFC East rivals raised a Super Bowl banner. Absent teams that played in Super Bowls, the league often shies away from featuring the same team in successive seasons.
So while Jerry Jones would love the attention, it is unlikely we see the Cowboys in this slot.
In most years, kicking off the season with the Kansas City Chiefs would be a viable option.
But 2026 is not most NFL seasons.
Yes, Travis Kelce is confirmed back for the 2026 campaign. But whether he is ready for Week 1 after suffering an ACL tear near the end of the 2025 season is an open question. The league could put Kansas City in this slot, and you can only imagine the kind of numbers this game would pull in if Mahomes is indeed ready to come back for the start of the season.
But if he is not ready, it might be the Justin Fields show to kick off the season.
Something tells me the NFL might save this game for later in the year, when it is much more likely Mahomes will be back for a prime-time game.
The New York Giants are coming off a 4-13 season, hold the fifth-overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, and are starting the season with a new head coach.
Normally, those are not the kind of factors that make for an intriguing matchup against the defending Super Bowl champions in Week 1 to kick off the season.
But when that new head coach is John Harbaugh, a former Super Bowl champion, in his first game with the Giants, the equation changes.
There are three better options for this game in Seattle, but this would be a very interesting matchup.
Yes, this would be a Super Bowl rematch, and the NFL has gone down this road before. The last time the league reached for a Super Bowl rematch came at the start of the 2016 season, when the Denver Broncos hosted the Carolina Panthers just months after the teams met in Super Bowl 50. So yes, this is an options.
However, does the league — and do the fans — really want a rematch of that Super Bowl?
Mike McDaniel and Justin Herbert versus Mike Macdonald and this Seattle defense?
That sentence alone has me thinking this could be the pick.
However, there is one more option, and one that is perhaps a matchup that the league would love to feature on opening night.
So a Super Bowl LX rematch might not move the needle.
How about a potential NFC playoff game preview? One that could even be a potential NFC Championship Game?
The Chicago Bears might be the best choice for the NFC when it comes to opening night in Seattle. Ben Johnson against Mike Macdonald. Caleb Williams versus the vaunted Seahawks defense. Two NFC division winners — and playoff teams — from a season ago. The winner of this game would likely vault to the top of the NFC conversation, and maybe even the league-wide power rankings, by the following Monday morning.
