Week 1 of the NFL preseason wrapped up Saturday night in Seattle, which leaves everyone who just watched their team asking some version of the same thing: when do they play next. The answer is Thursday. Las Vegas at Houston, 8 p.m. ET on ESPN, and then 15 more games over the following three days.
The schedule half of that is settled. The betting half is not, and that gap is the whole point of this piece. The NFL published these matchups and kickoff times back in June. The prices are another story. As of Sunday night, exactly one of the 16 games on this schedule has a live number attached to it anywhere on our odds screen — the other 15 are sitting there empty, waiting on coaches who have not spoken yet.
None of that is a problem. It is a four-day head start, and there is a right way to use it.
The Quick Answer
NFL preseason Week 2 runs Thursday, Aug. 20 through Sunday, Aug. 23, 2026: 16 games, every team playing once, with Las Vegas at Houston at 8 p.m. ET Thursday on ESPN opening it and Seattle at Tennessee at 8 p.m. ET Sunday on FOX closing it. Saturday is the crush: 10 of the 16 games, running from noon to 10 p.m. ET.
The full grid with times and channels is below, along with the one game that already has a price on it, what that price says, and the three dates on this week worth actually planning around.
The angle: preseason lines are priced off playing time, not talent, and playing time is not public yet. So the week splits cleanly: the schedule is knowable now, the numbers are not. Do the schedule work today; do the number work Wednesday, when the coaches start talking.
Every NFL Preseason Week 2 Game, Time And Channel
| Day | Time (ET) | Game | Venue | TV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thu, Aug. 20 | 8:00 p.m. | Las Vegas at Houston | Reliant Stadium | ESPN |
| Thu, Aug. 20 | 10:00 p.m. | San Francisco at LA Chargers | SoFi Stadium | NFL Network |
| Fri, Aug. 21 | 7:00 p.m. | NY Jets at Pittsburgh | Acrisure Stadium | NFL Network |
| Fri, Aug. 21 | 7:30 p.m. | Carolina at Jacksonville | EverBank Stadium | ESPN App |
| Fri, Aug. 21 | 9:00 p.m. | Green Bay at Denver | Empower Field at Mile High | NFL Network |
| Sat, Aug. 22 | 12:00 p.m. | Washington at Detroit | Ford Field | Local/regional |
| Sat, Aug. 22 | 1:00 p.m. | Atlanta at Indianapolis | Lucas Oil Stadium | Local/regional |
| Sat, Aug. 22 | 1:00 p.m. | Baltimore at Minnesota | U.S. Bank Stadium | ESPN App |
| Sat, Aug. 22 | 1:00 p.m. | Buffalo at Cleveland | Huntington Bank Field | NFL Network |
| Sat, Aug. 22 | 4:00 p.m. | New Orleans at LA Rams | SoFi Stadium | ESPN App |
| Sat, Aug. 22 | 4:00 p.m. | NY Giants at Miami | Hard Rock Stadium | NFL Network |
| Sat, Aug. 22 | 7:00 p.m. | Chicago at Cincinnati | Paycor Stadium | Local/regional |
| Sat, Aug. 22 | 7:00 p.m. | Philadelphia at New England | Gillette Stadium | NFL Network |
| Sat, Aug. 22 | 7:30 p.m. | Kansas City at Tampa Bay | Raymond James Stadium | ESPN App |
| Sat, Aug. 22 | 10:00 p.m. | Dallas at Arizona | State Farm Stadium | NFL Network |
| Sun, Aug. 23 | 8:00 p.m. | Seattle at Tennessee | Nissan Stadium | FOX |
Two rows are bolded because those are the only Week 2 games the NFL lists on its national broadcast-network schedule: ESPN has the Thursday opener in Houston, FOX has the Sunday closer in Nashville. NFL Network picks up seven of the games in between, four more stream on the ESPN App, and three carry no national listing at all. If your team is in that last group, check its site for the local channel.
One note on the opener's venue: Houston's stadium went back to being Reliant Stadium this month, after more than a decade under the NRG name. Same building, older name, and it will read differently on your ticket than it did last August.
The row to circle is the last one. Seattle at Tennessee sits alone on Sunday night on FOX, the only NFL preseason game on the board. Standalone August games tend to draw more casual money than the number deserves, and they draw it late, which is a very different handicap than the noon Saturday games nobody is watching. Keep that one in mind for later in the week; it is the game most likely to move for reasons that have nothing to do with football.
The Only Game With A Price On It Right Now
Here is where the market actually stood Sunday night, and it is a short story. Of the 16 games above, the Thursday opener in Houston is the only one carrying a live number on the OddsShopper live odds screen — the page that stacks every venue posting a game onto one screen instead of the single price your app happens to open on.
And the venues quoting it are not the sportsbooks you would expect. As of Sunday night, Kalshi had Las Vegas at -116 and Houston at -107. Crypto.com had both sides at -117. Polymarket US had a spread ladder up. DraftKings, Caesars, Bovada, Pinnacle and the rest of the traditional books had nothing on it — those same books have Week 1 of the regular season fully priced, three weeks further out. Expect all of these numbers to look different by the time you read this; that is the nature of a market this thin.
A Worked Example: What The Opener's Price Actually Says
Both sides of a game priced at once is the only situation where you can back out what a venue really thinks, so it is worth doing by hand once. Convert each American price to its implied probability, add them, and the amount over 100% is the house's cut.
| Venue | Las Vegas | Houston | Implied total | The cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kalshi | -116 (53.7%) | -107 (51.7%) | 105.4% | 5.4 points |
| Crypto.com | -117 (53.9%) | -117 (53.9%) | 107.8% | 7.8 points |
Normalize the Kalshi pair back to 100 and Las Vegas lands at roughly 51% to win the game, Houston at 49%. A coin flip with a lean, in other words, which is exactly what an exhibition opener between two teams in the same tier should look like when nobody knows who is playing yet. The number is telling you far less about team strength than about how little confirmed playing-time information the market has to work with.
The row that matters more is the second one. Crypto.com is charging 7.8 points where Kalshi charges 5.4 on the identical game, a 2.4-point difference in cost for opening one app instead of another. Same game, same coin flip, two different prices to take it — and this is the single game on the week where you can even make that comparison yet.
For the other 15 games there is nothing to strip the vig out of. They have not been posted at all.
Why 15 Of These 16 Games Have No Number Yet
Preseason lines run late for one reason: the input that decides them does not exist until midweek.
In a regular-season game, a spread is a read on two rosters. In August the rosters barely matter, because the question is not how good is Buffalo — it is does Buffalo's starting quarterback play a series, a half, or not at all. Only the head coach knows, and he says so at his Wednesday or Thursday presser, roughly 48 hours before kickoff. A book that posts Baltimore at Minnesota on Sunday is guessing at snap counts; a book that posts it Thursday afternoon is pricing information. So most of them wait, and the ones that go early are prediction markets, where the price is set by whoever is willing to take the other side rather than by a trading desk with reputational risk.
You saw the result of that dynamic all through Week 1. When numbers finally landed, they landed unevenly — the same side available at meaningfully different prices depending on which venue you opened, because each one was pricing a slightly different guess about who would be on the field. Our Week 1 Saturday card was built almost entirely on that inconsistency, and the backup quarterback snap counts behind it explain why the same handicap will drive Week 2.
What To Do With A Four-Day Head Start
The temptation with an empty board is to do nothing until Thursday. That wastes the part of the week you can actually control. Three things are worth doing now:
- Set Your Alerts On The Wednesday Pressers, Not The Lines. The line follows the playing-time news by minutes. If you are watching the number, you are watching the second thing that happens.
- Know Where The Key Numbers Sit Before The Spreads Exist. Preseason spreads typically open in the 1-to-3 range before playing-time news lands, which puts most of this week's board directly on or beside the most important number in football betting. Getting +3 instead of +2.5 is worth more in August than in any other month, because these games are decided by a single score from backups more often than by anything resembling a rout. The Week 1 Thursday card opened on exactly that principle.
- Decide Your Total Lean Now, Before The Numbers Anchor You. Preseason totals carry a structural under lean — vanilla play-calling, a running clock mentality in the second half, and a lot of players who have never taken a snap together. We laid out where that lean holds and where it breaks in our guide to preseason totals. Whatever you conclude, conclude it before Thursday, because a posted number is very good at making you agree with it.
One thing not to do: tease these games. A standard six-point teaser earns its reputation in the regular season by dragging a spread through 3 and 7, the two numbers that decide football games. In August there is nothing to drag it through, because the spreads start inside those keys already. You would be paying teaser prices to move a number that was never on the wrong side of anything.
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The Three Dates That Actually Matter
Sixteen games in four days is a lot to track, and most of it is background noise. The week really has three moments.
Thursday, Aug. 20. The only day with a priced game on it as of now, and a soft opening: two games, both in prime time. Las Vegas at Houston at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN is where the week's first real market read shows up, and where the rest of the board will take its cue for how aggressively to price everything else.
Saturday, Aug. 22. The crush. Ten games between noon and 10 p.m. ET, four of them kicking within an hour of each other in the early window. This is the day where line shopping stops being a nice habit and starts being the thing separating you from the field: with ten exhibition games overlapping, stale numbers and uneven updates across venues are far more likely than on a quiet Thursday. It is also the day the schedule punishes you for not having done your homework Wednesday. Last Saturday's times-and-channels rundown is a preview of how packed that window gets.
Sunday, Aug. 23. Seattle at Tennessee, alone, on FOX, at 8 p.m. ET — the callback to that last table row. One game, a national broadcast, no other NFL preseason football anywhere on the card, and a full day of casual money with one place to go. Handle it accordingly.
How I Am Approaching Week 2
Small, late, and shopped. That has been the honest answer in August for years and nothing about this schedule changes it.
What is different about this specific week is the sequencing, and it is worth saying plainly: the schedule is fixed and public, the prices are neither. I do not know what Baltimore at Minnesota is going to be priced at, and neither does anyone quoting you a number for it today. What I do know is that 16 games are going to hit the board inside about 72 hours, mostly at once, mostly on a Saturday, mostly at prices reacting fast to incomplete and uneven playing-time information — and that the difference between the best and worst version of the same bet in that environment is real money, available to anyone who bothers to look at more than one screen.
The whole edge this week lives right there: pairing the schedule map you just read with the quarterback and coach-usage news when it lands Wednesday, and acting before every venue has copied every other one. Free plays from our expert card post as these games get numbered on the OddsShopper free expert picks page, and if August markets are new to you, our preseason betting framework covers why snap intent outranks talent here, while the preseason odds primer explains how these numbers get posted in the first place. Looking further ahead than next week, Week 1 regular season odds are already up, and the 2026 strength of schedule is where the season-long work starts.
Sixteen games are about to be priced in 72 hours, most of them on the same Saturday afternoon. WK2PRESEASON20 takes 20% off OddsShopper Pro after a free 7-day trial, so you see all of those numbers on one screen the moment they land.
NFL Preseason Week 2 Schedule FAQ
When is NFL preseason Week 2 in 2026? NFL preseason Week 2 runs Thursday, Aug. 20 through Sunday, Aug. 23, 2026. Las Vegas at Houston kicks it off at 8 p.m. ET Thursday on ESPN, ten of the 16 games are played Saturday, and Seattle at Tennessee closes the week at 8 p.m. ET Sunday on FOX.
How many NFL preseason games are in Week 2? Sixteen — every team plays once. Two games Thursday, three Friday, ten Saturday and one Sunday night.
Are NFL preseason Week 2 odds out yet? Barely. Four days out, only the Thursday opener between Las Vegas and Houston carries a live price on our odds screen, and the venues quoting it are prediction markets rather than traditional sportsbooks. The other 15 games are listed with no number attached. Most books post preseason lines two to three days before kickoff, once coaches say who is playing.
Which NFL preseason Week 2 games are on national TV? Two are on national broadcast networks: ESPN has Las Vegas at Houston on Thursday, Aug. 20, and FOX has Seattle at Tennessee on Sunday, Aug. 23. NFL Network carries seven of the games in between, four more stream on the ESPN App, and three have no national listing, so check your team's site for the local channel.
Why do NFL preseason lines move so much? Because the input that decides them is not talent, it is playing time. A head coach confirming his starting quarterback will play a half can move a preseason spread more than a point, and that news lands two or three days before kickoff — usually after the line is posted.
