Well, the 2025 NFL Schedule finally dropped in its entirety, and in the days before and since, there has been much ado.

And, as in the past, there are quirks aplenty for the Green Bay Packers. In four total primetime games (and a couple of TBDs), there are a pair of Thursday night games, those coming in Weeks 2 (Commanders) and 9 (Eagles). Meanwhile, the team will travel a total of 12,292 miles during the regular season, seventh fewest of the 32 franchises. That’s good for fatigue, but maybe not so good for travel points.

Meanwhile, once again Green Bay will play on a holiday – a Thanksgiving Day tilt with the Lions, marking the third straight season with Turkey Day games.

Of course, the big news is that for the first time in Matt LaFleur’s tenure as head coach, the Packers will open the season at home, an anticipated divisional battle with the Detroit Lions. The six straight road starts leading into this season marked the longest in team history. (And that’s a long history.) In fact, both of the Packers’ first two games are at Lambeau Field.

In another quirk Packers fans have become used to in recent years, the team’s bye week is in Week 5, leaving a journey of 13 straight games. This one has drawn some boos from fans on social media, especially after the Pack had a plum Week 10 bye last year.

The question is, how much does it all really matter at this point in the process? For days, the NFL dropped teases, and then the inevitable leaks began in earnest early in the week. The teams get involved too, dropping creative, and sometimes bizarre, schedule reveal videos like this surreal, almost disturbing, one by the Packers’ creative team:

The makeup of the schedule certainly matters to a large number of NFL fans, and the NFL knows it – and that’s why they take yet one more opportunity dominate news cycles. And as the league predicted, the debate is on – who were the winners and losers, who got shafted, and why did the freaking Cowboys get six prime-time games while the Packers only got five?

But let’s rewind about one year to a one-on-one conversation LaFleur had with Larry McCarren on camera. Asked about his thoughts on last year’s schedule, LaFleur responded with this: 

“Our mindset is, a schedule’s a schedule. Our mindset is, ‘We’ve got to be our best regardless of when we play [or] where we play.’”

Which tells me he’s not sitting in his office at 1265 Lombardi Ave. right now, wringing his hands over the number of prime-time games or an early bye. The teams you play are the teams you play. Adversity, you say? It can be galvanizing if approached correctly.

LaFleur knows, as does author Vernon Brundage Jr., that, “Excuses are tools of incompetence used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness, and those who use them seldom specialize in anything else.”

And in the immortal words of Alfred E. Neuman, "What, me worry?"

In other words, nobody is feeling sorry for the Packers over a Week 5 bye or multiple Thursday night games. No matter how you stack it, the season is a grind. And let’s face it – nobody knows what injuries the Packers might suffer over the first four games. That early bye could easily come as a most welcome reprieve.

Now … when’s training camp start?