2025 NFL Game of the Year: Ranking the top five contests of the regular season

• Week 16 | Thursday, Dec. 18 (TNF) | Lumen Field (Seattle)
• FINAL SCORE: Seahawks 38, Rams 37 -- OT (Watch replay)

Do you like complete mayhem with extremely high stakes? This was the game for you, an instant classic that might have determined nothing less than the path to the Super Bowl. The game had everything. A stellar performance by leading MVP candidate Matthew Stafford. A wobbly start and redemptive effort by Sam Darnold. A furious comeback by the Seahawks, who were dominated by the Rams most of the way and overcame a 16-point deficit in the final 9 minutes of regulation, which included a punt return for a touchdown and an impromptu deep dive into the rule book to dissect an insane two-point conversion, in which Darnold's backward pass bounced off Jared Verse's helmet to be recovered in the end zone. Finally, there was a come-from-behind touchdown in overtime, followed by the Seahawks' third successful two-point conversion of the game -- thrown to a player who had just two previous catches this season. Whew. The Seahawks clinched a playoff berth with the win, and the rest of us got the game of the year. 

-- Judy Battista

• Week 1 | Sunday, Sept. 7 (SNF) | Highmark Stadium (Orchard Park, N.Y.)
• FINAL SCORE: Bills 41, Ravens 40 (Watch replay)

This game was supposed to be a heavyweight fight, and it didn't disappoint. The Ravens scored 40 points in only 25 minutes of possession. Bills quarterback Josh Allen showed why he won last year's MVP award by passing for 394 yards and scoring four total touchdowns. Baltimore actually dominated this contest with Lamar Jackson's passing and the running of Derrick Henry (169 yards and two touchdowns), but a late Henry fumble helped Buffalo rally from a 15-point deficit with a little more than four minutes to go. In the end, Allen put his team in position with timely runs and devastating throws. The season-long battle for AFC supremacy promised by this contest didn't materialize, with the Bills settling for a wild-card berth and the Ravens falling out completely in Week 18. But this was still an unforgettable way to kick off Sunday Night Football and a deserving ruler of this list for most of the season.

-- Jeffri Chadiha

• Week 16 | Saturday, Dec. 20 | Soldier Field (Chicago)
• FINAL SCORE: Bears 22, Packers 16 -- OT (Watch replay)

As a Bears fan, I am biased. There’s no way around that. But this one had everything you could want: a historic rivalry, prime-time billing, lead changes, onside kick recoveries, gritty off-the-bench performances, toe-tapping touchdown catches, overtime theatrics, playoff implications. Even beyond the NFC North race and the conference standing, this heavyweight battle had real rivalry-altering stakes: Chicago had lost 20 of its previous 23 matchups with Green Bay, including six consecutive at home and a heartbreaker just two weeks earlier. So when the Bears, down seven points with 1:59 remaining on the clock, set up for an onside attempt, Chicago fans could feel the weight of years’ worth of head-to-head losses pressing down on their hopes. Then the improbable happened: Josh Blackwell recovered Cairo Santos’ kick, giving the Bears one final chance to tie the game. And with their backs up against the wall, on fourth-and-4 with under 30 seconds to play, they were lifted by a stunning moment: Undrafted rookie Jahdae Walker hauled in the game-tying touchdown (on his second career catch) in the back corner of the end zone. When Chicago took possession of the ball in overtime, facing a sudden-death situation, belief among Bears fans was palpable. This time was going to be different. And it was. On a play that was added to the game plan just days earlier, Caleb Williams ripped a 46-yard dime that cut through the frigid, spiraling air at Soldier Field and landed in DJ Moore’s welcoming arms. One of the best throws of the season. One of the best Bears games of my lifetime. How could this one not make the list? 

-- Ali Bhanpuri

• Week 17 | Sunday, Dec. 28 (SNF) | Levi's Stadium (Santa Clara, Calif.)
• FINAL SCORE: 49ers 42, Bears 38 (Watch replay)

Timing played an interesting role in shaping this game-of-the-year ranking. Bears-49ers probably would have made it at any point in the season, just for being one of the better examples of an "Oops! All highlights!" game, stuffed end to end with endorphin-goosing big plays. But this wasn't merely a major leap forward for Caleb Williams and the Bears, or another reminder that the Niners are Still Very Good, Actually -- it was also a tantalizing appetizer for the playoffs. The hope in the postseason is that, thanks to the quality of competition and the threat of elimination, every contest has the potential to become an instant classic, and Chicago-San Francisco delivered, two weeks early. OK, so now we know neither of these teams clamed the NFC's No. 1 seed, with the Bears (No. 2) ultimately settling above the Niners (No. 6). At the time, postseason positioning imparted extra gravity to this back-and-forth scoring battle; favorable placement in that chase was up for grabs until the very final seconds, when Williams' last-gasp scramble and end-zone heave fell just on the wrong side of miraculous. That's the kind of oomph that will jump your game into our top five in the waning days of December. 

-- Tom Blair

• Week 3 | Sunday, Sept. 21 | Lincoln Financial Field (Philadelphia)
• FINAL SCORE: Eagles 33, Rams 26 (Watch replay)

With their most recent playoff exit top of mind, the Los Angeles Rams completely wrecked the Eagles for two quarters, holding the reigning Super Bowl champions to a putrid 33 total yards. The destruction continued early in the third, with the Los Angeles offense capitalizing on the extremely short field created by a Jared Verse strip-sack of Jalen Hurts to build a 26-7 lead. As my colleague and Rams radio color analyst Maurice Jones-Drew described the scene to me later: "The Linc was shook." Then, little by little, it was like the Eagles remembered they were supposed to be one of the most balanced and talented teams in the NFL. Hurts went on an absolute tear in the second half to obliterate the Rams' 19-point lead. The comeback was cemented with a pair of field-goal blocks, one by Jalen Carter and the second by Jordan Davis, setting up a truly indelible image: Davis, at 336 pounds, rumbling 61 yards on the return for a touchdown as time expired. Perhaps fittingly for a dominant team with a penchant for collecting inexplicable losses, the Rams appear on this list twice -- as the victims of epic comebacks that helped push them down to the fifth seed in the NFC postseason field.

-- Brooke Cersosimo

• Week 18 | Sunday, Jan. 4 (SNF) | Acrisure Stadium (Pittsburgh)
• FINAL SCORE: Steelers 26, Ravens 24 (Watch replay)

Your mileage may vary when it comes to watching two fitfully competitive teams play a fitfully competitive game for the right to rule an underwhelming division, which is what we got for most of Ravens-Steelers -- until the undeniably unhinged last 11 minutes. Two established star QBs going through their own versions of disappointing seasons whipped up a sudden rush of down-to-the-wire fireworks, with Lamar Jackson and Aaron Rodgers trading eye-popping throws in a race to see who would make the final highlight-reel play, reaching a crescendo with Jackson's last-minute fourth-down heave to Isaiah Likely, which gets bonus points for offering the snake-bitten tight end a taste of high-pressure redemption. And then came the defining moment of this game and these teams' immediate futures: a missed kick. It was an odd, slightly unsettling final snap of the regular season, but also packed with drama and loaded with import, delivering the Steelers to the playoffs for the 13th time under Mike Tomlin and presaging the firing of John Harbaugh as Ravens coach after nearly two decades on the job. All of which made this a suitable capper to the thrilling, occasionally disorienting chaos of 2025 -- and a perfect final entry for our list. 

-- Tom Blair