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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/Psychological_Bus182 on 2025-05-16 04:34:54+00:00.
So, I’ve been doing this fun mental exercise every year since 2020 to see how one could do a theoretical road trip to see all 32 teams play a home game within one season. I see other redditors have also done this exercise. Well, the 2025 schedule came out on May 14th this year, so I’m proposing that those who want to try this, especially those who have done it before, cross-post their results here, along with mine. There are likely many solutions, but I’m still looking for an AI or programming solution that can find the BEST (shortest) overall trip length.
Unlike last year, not only did I develop a reasonable route for this year’s schedule in pretty short order. I used a few triads (Thursday-Sunday-Monday, or Sunday-Monday-Thursday) home games somewhat physically close to each other. I avoided the overseas games the NFL continues to schedule (I think), and didn’t end up using any Friday or Wednesday games. I’m still looking for AI help trying to shorten it, but Chat GPT only tells me how to approach doing one, and won’t do one for me (blames it on an incomplete schedule in Weeks 17 and 18, among other things), and not how to check if it is optimized!
In my 2025 solution table below, yellow shade is when travelling takes almost or more than 1/4 of available time between games, light orange is shorter trips when travelling takes close to 1/3 of available time, and dark orange is longer trips when travelling takes close to 1/3 of available time - but this year - no red! (shorter trips where travelling takes up to or substantially more than 1/2 of available time). There are still some Sunday to Monday trips longer than 8 hours, however, but a few shorties of less than 4 hours, including the 40 minute jaunt from Washington to Baltimore. The “motherload” trip for this year is a west coast to east coast marathon of a mind boggling 35+ hours, but it’s Sunday to Sunday, allowing a full week to do it, unlike last year where a similar length trip only had a 3 day window.
The best parts about this result 1) its mostly in the north parts Sept to Oct, and in the south parts Nov to Dec into January, and 2) it’s the shortest I’ve ever come up with - only 16,311 miles! (The shortest possible route that is not constrained by the presence of home games in the NFL schedule is a little over 10,000 miles, for comparison)
All time and distance data provided by Google Maps; lengths in miles and time in hours, and this year to facilitate changes and data calculations, I used a Google spreadsheet that “looks up” locations and calculates distances and times for you, a great time-saver and one that can be copied if you want to try any task like this for yourself: