Seasonal guide · NFL
Thanksgiving football, minute by minute.
Detroit has won two of its last ten Thanksgiving games, and in three of them it never led for a single minute. Here are six holiday games from 2016 to 2025 as strips of colour, set as a quiz for the table.
Every strip on this page is a real NFL strip from the Huezle app, drawn by the app’s own code. More about NFL.
How to read the strips
Each strip is one game, one band per minute from kick-off to the final whistle, so a regulation game has 60 bands and an overtime game has more. A band is teal when the away team is leading, orange when the home team is leading, and sand-coloured when the score is tied. The deeper the colour, the bigger the lead, up to full colour at 17 points, the first margin that takes three scores to close.
Detroit and Dallas are at home every Thanksgiving, so on this page orange always means the Lions or the Cowboys. The strips show the score only, not who had the ball.
Question 1: the one that stayed level
One Lions game spent almost half its minutes tied and only turned orange in the very last band. Which year?
- Away Leading
- Tied
- Home Leading
2016, Vikings at Lions. The most balanced strip of the ten Detroit games. The Lions won 16–13, one of only two holiday wins in the decade.
Question 2: two strips, one opponent
Chicago visited Detroit in 2021 and again in 2024. One strip is mostly orange and ends teal; the other is orange from the first score to the last. Which is which?
- Away Leading
- Tied
- Home Leading
- Away Leading
- Tied
- Home Leading
In 2021 Chicago won 16–14 with the winning score in the final minute. In 2024 the Lions led for 53 minutes and held on, 23–20. Same matchup, opposite endings, and the strips are the mirror image of each other.
Question 3: the back-and-forth one
- Away Leading
- Tied
- Home Leading
2022, Bills at Lions. Detroit led late in the fourth quarter; Buffalo went ahead in the 58th minute and won 28–25. Look for the strip that keeps switching colour.
Question 4: the only one that went long
- Away Leading
- Tied
- Home Leading
The easiest question on the page, because the strip is longer than the rest. The Raiders led for 56 of the 66 minutes, Dallas kept pulling level, and the last band of overtime turns teal again. It is the only Thanksgiving overtime of the ten seasons.
Question 5: the blowout
- Away Leading
- Tied
- Home Leading
Washington never led. Dallas was up by ten at half-time and the colour only deepens from there, past the point where the scale stops getting darker, to finish 45–10.
Ten years of Lions and Cowboys on Thanksgiving
| Count | |
|---|---|
| Lions and Cowboys holiday games, 2016–2025 | 20 |
| Decided by eight points or fewer (one score) | 15 |
| Winner took the lead for good in the last five minutes | 5 |
| Lions won (of 10) | 2 |
| Cowboys won (of 10) | 6 |
Party game. Put the strips up in a random order and ask the table to match each one to its year. The overtime game gives itself away by its length; the Lions’ two wins are the only Detroit strips that end orange.
For more football, the biggest NFL comebacks uses the same strips. If basketball is on after the turkey, the NBA tip-off guide does the same for the playoffs. The other Thanksgiving games, and every other game of ten seasons, are in the NFL category.
Huezle has every game of ten NFL seasons. See if you can name one from its colours.
Download on the App StoreFree on iPhoneQuestions
Why do the Lions and Cowboys always play on Thanksgiving?
Both teams have hosted a Thanksgiving game for decades and the league keeps the tradition, so Detroit and Dallas are at home every year. A third game, at night, rotates between other teams.
How many Thanksgiving games have the Lions won recently?
Of the ten Thanksgiving games in Detroit from 2016 to 2025, the Lions won two: 16–13 over Minnesota in 2016 and 23–20 over Chicago in 2024.
Has a Thanksgiving game gone to overtime recently?
Yes. In 2021 the Raiders beat the Cowboys 36–33 in overtime in Dallas. It is the only Thanksgiving overtime game in Detroit or Dallas from 2016 to 2025.
More guides
- The biggest NFL comebacks of the last ten seasons.The biggest deficits overcome in NFL regular-season games from 2016 to 2025, drawn as strips of colour, from the Vikings’ 33-point comeback to the 21-point ones.
- Election night trivia: read the election from its colours.Presidential election trivia for election night: four quick rounds built on real elections drawn as strips of colour, one band per state. How many can you get?
- Gothic novels for Halloween, chapter by chapter.Frankenstein, Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde and more classic Gothic novels drawn as strips of colour, one band per chapter, from sombre indigo to bright gold.
- Holiday movie trivia: name the director from the career.Movie trivia for the holidays: famous directors’ careers drawn as strips, one band per film, dark to light by IMDb rating. Can you tell Nolan from Kubrick?
Now try naming one yourself.
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