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Saturday Night NFC Showdowns May Shape the Playoff Picture
Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

Saturday Night NFC Showdowns May Shape the Playoff Picture

Originally posted on Inside The Star  |  By Mark Heaney  |  Last updated Dec 20, 2025 1:56 PM ET

It is a rarity to have three NFL games kickoff before the Sunday slate, but that is exactly what fans are getting with Week 15’s Christmas-season chaos.

On Thursday night, fans got to see what was likely the game of the year to this point. The Los Angeles Rams and Seattle Seahawks sparred all the way through overtime en route to a thrilling 38-37 finish.

Two days later, we can sit back, plug in the Christmas lights, and watch four NFC squads battle it out with major playoff picture implications on the line.

First, it will be the reigning champs in the Philadelphia Eagles taking on the Washington Commanders in a divisional matchup, before the timeless Packers-Bears rivalry takes over our screens in the nightcap.

Here, we’ll go over both games, what they mean, and what you can expect as the Saturday night NFC showdowns commence.

1: Philadelphia Eagles (9-5) @ Washington Commanders (4-10)

4:00 PM CT Kickoff on FOX / PHI -7.0.

Somewhere, Roger Goodell is wishing this game could hold the preseason hype it had when the schedule was released.

An NFC Championship game rematch in late December between division rivals? That sounds great! The only problem is, the Commanders, coming off an electric revival season in 2024, have fallen flat in 2025.

Injuries and on-field struggles have them at 4-10 and out of the playoffs; this has also caused them to sit Jayden Daniels for the remainder of the year, so Marcus Mariota will man the ship tonight.

For Philadelphia, they’ve also struggled in recent weeks; if not for the Dallas Cowboys’ failure to win, this division could have actually been a close race.

Instead, they are a win away from both clinching their ticket to the postseason and from becoming the first team to win back-to-back NFC East titles in two decades. As seven-point favorites, they are pretty clearly poised to do just that.

If they do manage to lose, it would simply delay what seems to be the inevitable inside the division, while also actually hurting the Commanders in the NFL Draft order.

Hopefully, this one becomes a fun game to watch that, with admitted bias, manages to keep Dallas’s playoff hopes alive.

2. Green Bay Packers (9-4-1) @ Chicago Bears (10-4)

7:20 PM CT Kickoff on FOX / CHI -1.5

This may be the only game of the rest of the week that can stack up against what we saw in Seattle on Thursday.

In Week 14, the Packers and Bears went at it in a highly anticipated matchup in Lambeau. It was a wild one that ultimately ended with a 28-21 Green Bay victory that, albeit temporarily, moved them into first place in the NFC North.

Unfortunately for the Green and Gold, Week 15 was not nearly as kind to them as Bo Nix’s red-hot Broncos took them down 34-26 in Denver. On top of the loss, the Packers also saw Micah Parsons go down with a season-ending ACL tear.

So, they come into this rematch with Chicago having lost their most talented player and their first-place lead in the division.

For Chicago, they rebounded off the tough loss in Green Bay with a blowout 31-3 win over the Cleveland Browns. That win propelled them back into the division lead and slotted them in as the second seed in the NFC.

It’s important to note that neither team can clinch the postseason with just a win, let alone the division entirely this week. It will, however, dictate who leads the proverbial pack heading into Week 17, where Green Bay plays Baltimore and Chicago plays San Francisco.

In short, this is a mountain-sized December game for both teams, which is so refreshing considering the more recent history of this iconic rivalry.

This article first appeared on Inside The Star and was syndicated with permission.

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