The annual Thanksgiving Day slate of NFL games has become a tradition unto itself, with fans taking advantage of the holiday to catch some football with family and friends.
But some traditions are older than others, and the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys have become synonymous with the holiday as they are perennial competitors on the fourth Thursday of November.
Why is that? DAZN takes a look.
Detroit Lions
The Lions first started playing on Thanksgiving in 1934, with then-owner George A. Richards looking to make a splash after purchasing the team earlier that year.
Richards set things up so that the Lions would host the back-to-back defending champion Chicago Bears on the holiday Thursday, drawing over 25,000 fans.
Since then, the Lions have played on every Thanksgiving besides a six-year hiatus during World War II.
Dallas Cowboys
The Cowboys have nearly 60 Thanksgiving Day appearances of their own, with their first occuring in 1966.
Then-Cowboys GM Tex Schramm wanted his team to claim more of the national spotlight and arranged Dallas' first Thanksgiving game against the Cleveland Browns.
The game was a smash hit with over 80,000 in attendance, and the Cowboys have played on every Thanksgiving since — except for two years in the 1970s in which the league experimented with other teams playing on the holiday.