Does Week Six feature a Super Bowl preview?
By Andy Davies
The 2025 NFL schedule is here, and Week Six offers fans a chance to see a potential Super Bowl preview.
Schedule release day is a widely celebrated day in the NFL, particularly overseas, as fans all over the world get their calendars out and start to plan their trips to the States.
One of the standout matchups in this year’s schedule comes in Week Six, as both of last season’s number one seeds, Kansas City Chiefs and Detroit Lions, face off.
On Sunday Night Football in Week Six, expect fireworks between the two teams.
A desire to make an early statement
By the time Week Six arrives, we will have some idea of how the season will play out. Both teams will want to make amends for how their 2024 seasons ended.
The Chiefs will be looking to go one step further than their Super Bowl LIX loss to the Philadelphia Eagles and reclaim what has so often been theirs in recent times. Meanwhile, the Lions will want to avenge their Divisional Round loss to the Washington Commanders, in a year that many of their fanbase felt was theirs.
This game was the season opener in 2023 and it was almost the Super Bowl preview, as the Lions allowed a big lead to pass them by against the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship.
There is a level of uncertainty towards the Lions going into the 2025 season. Will they recover from such a devastating loss to the Commanders? Having already collapsed in the NFC Championship a season prior, they ended up losing in shock fashion in the Divisional Round. The Atlanta Falcons have never recovered from the Super Bowl LI loss to the New England Patriots and have gone one step back every season since.
With Super Bowl windows closing quicker than a Tyreek Hill 100-meter race, there is no guarantee that the Lions will ever recover from back-to-back heartbreaking postseason defeats. With the loss of two coordinators in Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn, this could have an impact bigger than realised.
However, if they can get a win over the Chiefs in Arrowhead during Week Six and go 5-1 or 4-2, this would send out a huge statement to the rest of the league that they are a forced to be reckoned with in 2025 and would fuel Super Bowl talk.
This could be a game for the ages
There’s a possible world where neither team makes the Super Bowl in San Francisco in February. Both teams could lose in the Championship round or have disappointing seasons and miss out on the playoffs altogether. Even if either scenario become true, this could still be one of the games of the season.
We have seen both quarterbacks draw up an all-time NFL classic back in 2018, when Jared Goff and the Los Angeles Rams defeated Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs 54-51.
Both teams feature excellent run games, whether it be the Chiefs’ Isaiah Pacheco or the excellent one-two punch in Detroit of Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery, and there will be plenty of weapons for Mahomes and Goff to throw to.
In Rashee Rice and Amon-Ra St. Brown, these are two excellent receivers. The latter has established himself as one of the best in the league over the past two years. In tight ends Travis Kelce and Sam LaPorta, these are two brilliant players at the position at very different stages of their careers.
Kelvin Sheppard is the replacement for Glenn at the defensive coordinator. He has made the jump up from his role as linebackers coach. Can he improve the Lions defense that struggled towards the latter stages of the 2024 season?
The team will be back healthy in 2025, with Aidan Hutchinson the key returnee. This unit will look to get back to the 2024 version that was 2nd in yards allowed per game or the 2023 run defense that came second in the league. This could form a fascinating battle between Sheppard and Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo.
In a contest between the two number one seeds in 2024, both teams finishing in top seven for points scored, this game represents one heck of a contest and one that could very much be a preview of Super Bowl LX.
ANDY DAVIES
NFL ANALYST
ANDY IS A SPORTS JOURNALISM GRADUATE WITH OVER FOUR YEARS EXPERIENCE OF NFL WRITING AND PODCASTING. ANDY HAS BEEN TO EVERY NFL STADIUM AND IS THE HOST OF THE ACROSS THE POD PODCAST. HE HAS PRESS PASS EXPERIENCE AT THE LONDON GAMES AND MANY OTHER NFL BASED EVENTS SUCH AS THE SUPER BOWL, HAVING INTERVIEWED THE LIKES OF AARON RODGERS, JASON BELL, OSI UMENYIORA, PATRICK MAHOMES, TRAVIS KELCE, DERRICK HENRY, SAQUON BARKLEY AND JALEN HURTS.