Monday Night Football is usually a one-part feature.
But not on this Monday night. Week 4 of the 2025 NFL regular season has a two-act show, and it's going to overlap.
This season already had a Monday night with two games, but those started about three hours apart, just like Sunday afternoon's early and late afternoon windows. A fan that wanted to watch both games could pretty much just watch one, then watch the next one.
It won't work like that in Week 4.
The New York Jets and Miami Dolphins kick off at 7:15 p.m. ET. And then the Cincinnati Bengals and Denver Broncos kick off at 8:15 p.m. ET.
Yes, it's a little weird.
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Why Monday Night Football has 2 games that overlap in Week 4
In ESPN's new Monday Night Football contract agreed to in 2021, Disney (which owns ESPN) received extra game inventory and had to decide what to do with it.
One of the options has been overlapping Monday night games like this, which they have done a few times in the past.
In 2023, ESPN's Burke Magnus explained it to The Athletic like this:
“We’re going to learn more about what optimizes best, and I think by next year we’ll continue to hone on driving the biggest viewership between the two games. We will learn if it is better to start with the ABC game, the ESPN game, or the other way around. … In Week 14, we’re doing both games at the same time. The thought there is, can we combine total audience and do a little bit like we used to do in the old days of college football where we create a simultaneous national and regional appeal and use our networks to do that in a single window? Then it combines to sort of like a super audience total number."
Clearly, it went well enough the first time around that they've done it a few more times.
The NFL started these games at 7:30 and 8:15 p.m. ET in Week 4 in 2024. So they mixed it up just slightly with the full hour difference between kickoffs here in 2025 Week 4.
When are the two Week 4 MNF games?
Week 4's Monday Night Football doubleheader will kick off with Jets-Dolphins.
The Jets at Dolphins game has a 7:15 p.m. kick time and will be on ESPN.
The Bengals at Broncos game comes second. It starts at 8:15 p.m. ET and is on ABC.
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