These are the Biggest and Fiercest NFL Rivalries

The NFL has built its storied history on more than just great games. It’s been defined by intense rivalries that have captivated fans for decades.

These matchups feature bad blood, explosive offenses, dominant defenses, high stakes, Hall of Famers, title games and the kind of drama that makes football unforgettable.

What drives a bona fide NFL rivalry?

• Proximity. When fan bases are close to one another, opposing fans can more easily travel to away games, meaning home games don’t always feel like true home-field advantages.
• Frequency of play. The more these teams see each other, the greater the chances for bad blood to develop and storylines to build. Division rivals play at least twice per year and sometimes it seems like the NFL schedulers delight fans with the best conference or league rivalries on an annual basis.
• Stakes. Sometimes teams just happen to collide when more is on the line whether it be playoff berths, division titles or Super Bowl aspirations. When everything matters, emotions run higher and games become legendary.

The very best NFL rivalries combine all three elements, creating matchups that transcend the sport itself and become cultural phenomena. Here’s a look at some of the most intense NFL rivalries ever.

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The Greatest NFL Rivalries of All Time

As the 2025 season approaches, some of these rivalries are poised for renewed intensity while others may feature teams entering rebuilding phases. But that’s the beauty of NFL rivalries—they evolve, they surprise and they always deliver drama when you least expect it.

Here are some of the league’s best rivals.

• Pittsburgh Steelers vs Baltimore Ravens
• Philadelphia Eagles vs Dallas Cowboys
• Kansas City Chiefs vs Cincinnati Bengals
• Green Bay Packers vs Chicago Bears
• New York Jets vs New England Patriots
• Atlanta Falcons vs New Orleans Saints
• Dallas Cowboys vs San Francisco 49ers
• New England Patriots vs New York Giants
• Buffalo Bills vs Kansas City Chiefs
• New England Patriots vs Indianapolis Colts
• Cincinnati Bengals vs Pittsburgh Steelers
• San Francisco 49ers vs Seattle Seahawks

Pittsburgh Steelers vs Baltimore Ravens

While there are rivalries with longer histories, few teams epitomize modern NFL rivalry quite like the Steelers and Ravens. Despite the Ravens existing for less than 30 years as a franchise, these two teams and their brutal matchups have become the gold standard for divisional hatred.

Both franchises are known for their hard-nosed, dominant defenses, making their games gritty, grinding affairs that often feel more like battles than football games. These season series matchups frequently determine the AFC North division title and have regularly extended into the playoffs, raising the stakes to championship levels.

This rivalry has featured Hall of Fame head coaches and Hall of Fame players on both sides, with both franchises maintaining remarkable consistency and success throughout the 2000s and beyond.

The proximity factor is strong here — Pittsburgh and Baltimore are relatively close, allowing for passionate fan travel and intense atmosphere. Think of it as similar to the college rivalry intensity between Michigan and Ohio State, but transplanted to the NFL.

While 2025 doesn’t appear to showcase the same competitive level between these teams, you can never count out the Steelers when they’re playing the Ravens, and vice versa.

Philadelphia Eagles vs Dallas Cowboys

The NFC East is littered with intense divisional matchups and practically every combination of teams creates a compelling rivalry. But over the last decade, the Eagles and Cowboys rivalry has risen to the top, mainly because of consistently high stakes.

These are two teams that have experienced immense playoff success and are often fighting for division spots and playoff advancement, making every meeting feel crucial.

The Eagles’ recent success, including two Super Bowl wins in the last decade compared to the Cowboys’ Super Bowl drought, has given Philadelphia the upper hand as of late.

Heading into the 2025 season series, the Eagles are Super Bowl contenders in a way that the Cowboys simply aren’t. But Dallas still looks like a potential playoff team, which should give this rivalry two interesting chapters during the regular season.

Kansas City Chiefs vs Cincinnati Bengals

This rivalry represents something rare in the modern NFL: a matchup born almost purely out of stakes rather than history or geography. The Chiefs and Bengals have faced each other multiple times in either the AFC Divisional round or AFC Championship game since 2020, creating instant animosity and respect.

It’s become a rivalry of elite quarterbacks: Joe Burrow of the Cincinnati Bengals against Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs, in much the same way that the Patriots and Colts rivalry was defined by Tom Brady versus Peyton Manning in the early 2000s.

What makes this rivalry special is that each team has gotten the other’s number at crucial moments, something that is exceedingly rare in the Patrick Mahomes era.

Green Bay Packers vs Chicago Bears

The Packers and Bears boast the oldest rivalry in the NFL, steeped in nearly a century of tradition and bad blood. However, over the last decade, it’s been entirely lopsided, with the Packers dominating their Chicago rivals.

This rivalry extends beyond football—the Chicago-Milwaukee-Wisconsin geographic tension appears in other sports too, from the Brewers and Cubs to the Bucks and Bulls. It’s built on proximity, consistency and deep historical roots.

The rivalry has featured high-stakes moments that define both franchises. They met four times in 2010-2011, with Green Bay winning all four encounters, including the regular season finale and then three weeks later in the NFC Championship game. In 2013, their season finale determined the NFC North division winner.

These two teams rank first and second in all-time NFL wins. They’ve featured two of the most iconic head coaches in Vince Lombardi and Mike Ditka and fielded numerous Hall of Famers. Their matchups feel like battles between football royalty.

New York Jets vs New England Patriots

Unless some real surprises await us from these squads this season, neither is expected to be in contention for the Lombardi Trophy in 2025.

However, excluding the Jets and Patriots from an NFL rivalry discussion would be like omitting the Yankees and Red Sox from baseball’s greatest rivalries. It’s literally the same passionate fan bases meeting in a different sport.

While both teams would be happy just to achieve winning records this season, they find themselves in similar positions of rebuilding and looking toward new eras in their franchise histories.

They enter their 2025 matchups playing more for bragging rights than anything else, but their season series will also serve as an indicator of what this rivalry could look like in years to come as both franchises rebuild.

Atlanta Falcons vs New Orleans Saints

The Falcons and Saints were the first two NFL franchises established in the Deep South, which created two distinct fan bases who only had each other as approximate geographic rivals.

While this rivalry doesn’t receive the same national attention as others, both fan bases consider the other their most hated opponent. Entering the 2025 season, the overall series stands tied at 56-56, showing just how evenly matched these teams have been historically.

They’ve only met in the playoffs once, with the Falcons winning back in 1991, but each franchise has made at least one Super Bowl appearance since 2000.

This year presents an interesting dynamic: Atlanta enters with divisional, if not playoff aspirations, while the Saints appear destined to be one of the NFL’s worst teams. We will see if rivalry adrenaline can spark some magic.

Dallas Cowboys vs San Francisco 49ers

The Cowboys and 49ers rivalry was quintessential football in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Both teams experienced historic stretches during this period, featuring Hall of Famers all over the field from offense to defense to the sidelines.

From 1992 to 1994, they met in three straight NFC Championship games, with each contest being a hard-fought battle where the winner went on to capture the Super Bowl.

This rivalry has featured some of the greatest head coaches in NFL history in Tom Landry, Bill Walsh and Jimmy Johnson. Some of its most legendary players include Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Emmitt Smith and Deion Sanders. And some of its most iconic moments? Just try mentioning ‘The Catch’ to a Cowboys fan of a certain age.

The lack of high-stakes matchups in recent decades has cooled this rivalry between the distant cities, but should they meet again with something meaningful on the line, fans can expect montages of all the great moments that made this rivalry legendary.

New England Patriots vs New York Giants

Both teams enter 2025 as squads in the lower third of the league. The Giants are in rebuilding mode while the Patriots show some promise with young playmakers, making this year’s matchups less compelling from a competitive standpoint.

This rivalry stems somewhat from proximity, but because the teams play in different conferences, they historically didn’t face each other with great frequency. It was a matchup between a New York team and a Boston team that didn’t mean much — until 2007 changed everything.

When the Giants took on the undefeated New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII and won in improbable, miraculous fashion, a rivalry was instantly born. Four years later in 2011, the two teams met in the Super Bowl again, and the Giants won again, just as miraculously.

Even though the rest of their rivalry history pales in comparison to those two games, when you have two improbable Super Bowl matchups between teams, you become rivals whether you want to or not. This also represented Tom Brady’s second rivalry against the Manning brothers, this time with younger brother Eli Manning providing the frustration.

Buffalo Bills vs Kansas City Chiefs

Like the Bengals and Chiefs, this rivalry is marked by a modern-day quarterback duel between Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes. Both teams have met in the playoffs multiple times over the last five years, with the Chiefs winning every encounter.

These matchups have produced some of the most exciting games in recent NFL history, particularly their 2022 AFC Divisional round classic that featured four scores in the final two minutes to send it to overtime. Following the Chiefs’ controversial overtime win, that game literally re-wrote the rulebook on overtime.

Entering the 2025 season, both teams are considered Super Bowl favorites and fans are hoping for another epic chapter in this budding rivalry. If luck should have it, we’ll witness another instant classic between these high-powered offenses.

New England Patriots vs Indianapolis Colts

This rivalry was largely defined by the individual battle between Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, two frequent MVP candidates who represented the best quarterbacks in the league during the 2000s and early 2010s.

Both teams met routinely in the playoffs, with the Patriots often emerging victorious in these high-stakes encounters. However, the Colts managed to get the best of New England in the AFC Championship game on their way to their lone Super Bowl victory in the 2006 season, providing Manning with his signature playoff triumph over Brady.

Cincinnati Bengals vs Pittsburgh Steelers

Another intense AFC North rivalry. This matchup was especially heated during the early 2000s, when marked by excessive violence and unsportsmanlike conduct that made merely surviving one of the prizes of this matchup.

Like the NFC East, it seems every team in the AFC North could develop rivalries with each other given the division’s physical nature and competitive balance, but the Steelers tend to bring out something different in their opponents than the rest of the matchups, especially the Bengals.

While 2025’s season series doesn’t carry the same stakes as prior years as the Steelers are expected to see a down year, every rivalry week in the AFC North feels a little different.

San Francisco 49ers vs Seattle Seahawks

These two teams became divisional rivals in 2002, but it wasn’t until the 2010s that this developed into a true rivalry when both teams experienced great runs of success that brought meaningful stakes to their matchups.

Both teams were led by dynamic former college head coaches – Pete Carroll for the Seahawks and Jim Harbaugh for the 49ers – who brought their own bravado and created a personal rivalry between the sidelines.

In 2012 and 2013, they met in playoff games where the winner went on to reach the Super Bowl both times, elevating the stakes and the hatred to championship levels.

While 2025 could present an interesting matchup as both teams look to grab playoff spots, the rivalry’s intensity will depend on whether both franchises can return to their previous competitive peaks.

Tom Brady vs The Manning Brothers

One of the more fascinating rivalries of the 2000s and 2010s wasn’t between teams, but between one quarterback and two brothers who frustrated him in different ways.

Tom Brady, playing for the Patriots, came up against Peyton Manning’s Colts frequently with playoff seeding and Super Bowl appearances on the line. And he faced off against Peyton’s younger brother Eli Manning and his New York Giants twice in the sport’s biggest game, losing both times.

While Brady had Peyton’s number, winning far more playoff meetings than not, he was completely stymied by Eli and the New York Giants in the Super Bowl. One underrated mark of a great rivalry is a definitive moment and ‘The Helmet Catch’ more than meets the bill.

Frankly, Brady probably doesn’t care whether he has an overall winning record against Eli Manning. Those two Super Bowl losses likely sting more than any regular season or mere playoff victories could soothe.

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