NFL Game Pass – Review 2020

Navigating the complex broadcast schedule of NFL games is no easy task. Even video streaming services that offer all the channels with NFL broadcast rights only cover games that air nationally or in your local market. In other words, if you don’t live in your favorite team’s local market, you can’t watch most of that team’s games. NFL Game Pass, on the other hand, enables you to watch replays of every NFL game (including playoff matchups and the Super Bowl) after they air and listen to live broadcasts, regardless of your market. The service is missing support for some streaming specs, and some people might not be able to get over the fact that the games are not live, but NFL Game Pass does include some excellent playback features.

What Can I Watch With NFL Game Pass?

The primary appeal of NFL Game Pass is the ability to watch replays of every NFL game after it airs. That means that you can watch every game from the first week (there was no preseason this year due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis) all the way to the Super Bowl LV. To put that into perspective, that’s up to 16 total games each week you can replay. At best, on a live TV streaming service, you would get six or seven games depending on the schedule. You may be able to watch select preseason games live, too.

NFL Game Pass also includes full audio streams of each game (you can choose between home, away, and national announcers). You can listen to a game’s broadcast audio as it airs. There’s also a condensed game replay mode that typically cuts the playtime to about 45 minutes and a Coaches Film mode that shows each play with deliberate separation.

Apart from game coverage, you can watch several current NFL-centric shows produced by the NFL Network, among them NFL Live, Good Morning Football, and NFL 360. Older episodes of All or Nothing, Hard Knocks, America’s Game, as well as archives of past Super Bowls are all available to stream, too. At least some of the shows are available on other video streaming services, however, so this is not a huge draw.

Don’t confuse NFL Game Pass with NFL RedZone. The latter is a cable channel that caters to fantasy football fans and shows scoring plays in a continuous block on Sunday afternoons. NFL RedZone is not part of the NFL Game Pass package, but the channel is available as an add-on for other NFL streaming services, as I explain below.

If you happen to live in the same broadcast market as your favorite team or otherwise don’t care what game is playing, live streaming services may be a better option. FuboTV and YouTube TV currently are the best choices for NFL coverage, since they include all the major broadcast networks (for watching Sunday afternoon and Sunday night games), NFL Network (for watching Thursday Night Football games), and ESPN (for catching Monday Night Football games). Both services also allow you to add the NFL RedZone channel via an add-on package. Hulu also includes most of the major channels you need to watch NFL games, except for NFL Network.

If you are willing to seriously cut down on the amount of football you can watch, consider the primarily on-demand services, CBS All Access and Amazon Prime Video. A subscription to CBS All Access includes a live stream of your local CBS network, which means you can watch any sports that broadcast on that channel, including Sunday afternoon NFL games, PGA Tour events, and some NCAA basketball. Prime Video subscribers can watch Thursday Night Football games later in the season.

Sports fans who want to watch more than just the NFL should check out our roundup of the best sports streaming services. We have a separate article that explains what services and channels you need to watch every sport without cable.

How Much Does NFL Game Pass Cost?

NFL Game Pass costs $99 per year and provides coverage for the entirety of the current NFL season. The current subscription expires on July 31, 2021, for example, so it’s in your best interest to subscribe as early on in the season as possible. You can also pay for NFL Game Pass in quarterly installments ($29.99 per quarter), but that plan ends up costing much more than an annual subscription. If you only care about watching replays of the playoffs, you could just subscribe for a single one of those quarters later in the season. NFL Game Pass offers a free, seven-day trial, but you need to add a payment option to get access.

Compared to other NFL streaming services, NFL Game Pass is a better deal than most. Locast is the exception since it only costs $5 per month and allows you to watch every game that airs on local NBC, CBS, and FOX channels.

All the other live streaming services cost much more per month. Sling TV’s individual Orange and Blue plans are $30 per month, but the combined plan is $45 per month. Hulu + Live TV and AT&T TV Now start at around $55 per month. FuboTV’s standard plan is $59.99 per month and YouTube TV is $64.99 per month. CBS All Access and Prime Video are only $5.99 and $8.99 per month respectively.

You can watch NFL Game Pass via a web browser or mobile platforms (Android and iOS), media streaming devices (Android TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, and Roku), and game consoles (PlayStation 4 and Xbox One). You can even download a dedicated app from the Microsoft Store; Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Netflix all offer apps on this store, too. Speaking of mobile apps, NFL Game Pass is just one section of the main NFL Mobile app, which as I explain later, allows you to watch national and in-market games for free as they air.

NFL Game Pass is available internationally, though there are several different versions. The version I am reviewing is the one that is available to users in the US. Check out NFL Game Pass’s help page for more information about other markets. For live NFL games in Canada, Dazn is another option.

NFL Game Pass on the Web

NFL Game Pass’s web interface isn’t groundbreaking; it looks more like a plain old website than other video streaming services. The primarily blue-and-white interface looks clean and the page’s different modules all have ample space. You navigate the experience via a top-level menu that breaks down the content between games, shows, and team landing pages. In the upper right corner, you can change whether the service shows scores for games (it’s off by default, so you don’t see game results before you get a chance to watch the replays) and access our profile settings. You can make changes to your subscription here, manage your watchlist, follow your favorite teams, and view your watch history. Note that you can only add on-demand shows, not game replays, to the watchlist section. There aren’t any settings here that affect the playback experience. There are none, for example, for customizing closed captions or setting the default playback resolution.

The service’s main page lists sections for every week in the NFL season, and you can browse back as far as the 2009 season from a drop-down menu at the time of testing. Below that menu, the page highlights a few noteworthy on-demand productions. Most people will probably just scroll down to view all the game replays. There’s no way to sort these games, but since there are only at most 16 games every week, this is not such a big problem. If you hover over any of the game cards, you can jump right into playback of the audio replay, full game, condensed game, or Coaches Film. On the game’s detail page, option box score information and game statistics are available.

The NFL Shows and Sessions sections have a similar organization. You get a list of shows with available episodes in horizontally scrolling lists. The Sessions page breaks down videos into Offense, Defense, and Coaches sections, but there’s an extremely limited amount of content here. The Search section is very advanced, on the other hand. At the top level, you can search for teams, players, or in-game highlights. Then, you can filter down results with several drop-down selectors. For example, under the player search, you can filter results by play type (such as Big Plays or Touchdown), down, teams, week, and season. The results show up in a playlist and it’s easy to jump into the highlights.

NFL Game Pass on Mobile

As mentioned, there isn’t a separate NFL Game Pass app to download; it’s a part of the NFL Mobile app. That app already gives you access to free NFL games in your local market (Sunday afternoon games) and national broadcasts (Thursday Night, Sunday Night, and Monday Night Football games). The one catch is that you can’t cast these games to a larger screen. I downloaded the NFL Mobile app on a Google Pixel 3 running Android 11 and had no issues signing in to my account.

To access the NFL Game Pass section in the mobile app, select the More Section in the bottom navigation bar, and then the Game Pass option. The interface within this section is very basic. The app just shows a horizontally scrolling list of each week’s games, plus a section for Super Bowl games going back to Super Bowl XLIV in 2010. When you click on a game’s thumbnail, you get the option to watch a full replay, the condensed game, Coaches Film, or listen to the game’s audio. The app supports a picture-in-picture (PiP) mode, but it’s not a standard implementation. Instead of a small video player that floats above the rest of the app, the minimized player shows a tiny video playback square with playback controls on the side in a floating bar. This is not an ideal viewing experience.

Playback Experience

The web app’s playback interface is more complex than that of most other video streaming services. Aside from the standard playback controls, you also get 10-second rewind and fast-forward buttons; a slow-motion button; an option for playback resolution; and a closed captions toggle. You can also switch playback views to show one, two, or four games at the same time. At the top of the screen, you can jump directly into another game stream, too. In the upper left corner below the game selector, you can switch playback modes (your choices are Broadcast, Condensed, Coaches Film, and Listen), view a play-by-play timeline, and see game stats. One issue with this interface is that the top overview covers up the closed captions when you mouse over the screen.

The mobile playback screen carries over the rewind and fast-forward buttons and the closed caption toggle, but that’s it. You can’t select other games, view multiple games at once, or view plays and stats.

Game Pass only streams games in 720p, which is disappointing, especially since none of the video content is live. None of the available shows on the service are available to stream in higher quality either. The service makes a distinction between 720p HQ or 720p HD, depending on the content, but the distinction between the two in testing is unclear.

Most on-demand services support at least 1080p streams and some, such as Apple TV+, Prime Video, and Netflix, offer 4K content. Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV both support 1080p live channel streams on select platforms. FuboTV even broadcasts some live NFL games in 4K.

I tried watching a replay of the 2010 Super Bowl between the Saints and Colts over my PC’s Ethernet connection (200 Mbps download) and did not experience any playback issues. The video quality reached its full resolution and the audio played in sync.

Accessibility and Other Features

NFL Game Pass does offer closed captions for all of its content, but there’s no way to customize the size, position, font, or color. The captions appear in the upper left-hand side of the playback screen in the standard white text with a black background. They are legible, but the font size seems a bit small to my eye. Other video streaming services, such as BritBox and Crackle, allow you to make changes to the subtitle appearance directly from the playback screen.

You won’t find the Audio Description feature that Apple TV+, Netflix, and Prime video offer alongside their on-demand content. Audio Descriptions are audible descriptions of scene changes and character actions that are not discernible through dialog alone. This feature is typically reserved for narrative content rather than sporting events, but some of the NFL Game Pass’s on-demand show might benefit from this accessibility option.

You can select a Spanish-language audio option for games, but there’s no way to sync that up with the video playback. Apple TV+ does a much better at offering its content in more languages. Since NFL Game Pass is available in so many international markets, its lack of support for multiple language options is a notable omission.

Game Pass does not support parental controls or multiple profiles, but neither of those capabilities is relevant to the service’s content. I was unable to confirm whether NFL Game Pass restricts simultaneous streams to a certain number of devices, but I was able to watch games on two devices (my desktop PC and Android phone) concurrently without issue.

DVR recording also doesn’t make much sense, since there isn’t any live video streaming content available and the service includes a reasonable amount of NFL coverage from year’s past. However, NFL Game Pass does not support offline downloads on mobile, which is a major omission. Since the NFL games on the service are not live anyway, it would have made sense to include this capability. The length of full NFL games is suitable for long travel times and I could imagine some subscribers wanting the ability to listen to game audio the same way they would listen to an offline podcast.

NFL Game Pass and VPN

A VPN is an excellent way to protect your privacy online. Sometimes, a VPN’s ability to mask your true location interferes with video streaming services. Some content may be locked to certain regions for example, which is why many streaming services try to block VPN traffic outright.

I tried streaming content on NFL Game Pass from both my desktop PC and Android phone which were connected to a US-based Mullvad VPN server. I didn’t have any issues streaming on either platform. However, when I switched to a server in Sweden, I was unable to stream anything.

Even if your VPN and video streaming services work for now, that’s no guarantee that they will continue to do so. Most video streaming services actively work to prevent you from streaming content over a VPN connection.

Watch Every NFL Game…With a Delay

For NFL fans who do not live in their favorite team’s market and don’t want to pay for cable, NFL Game Pass is the next best thing to watching the games live. The service lives up to its promise of hosting replays of every NFL game and even throws in some genuinely useful playback modes and controls. We also like the ability to listen to live game audio. However, NFL Game Pass limits streams to 720p resolution and does not allow you to watch or listen to games offline. People who do live in their favorite team’s market should consider one of the live TV services we mentioned, instead.

Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV are our top picks for live TV streaming services because of their excellent set of features and comprehensive channel lineups. Netflix is our Editors’ Choice winner for on-demand services because of its top-notch originals and innovative features.

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