2025 NFL regular season ends with Ravens at Steelers

The 2025 regular season concludes next weekend. And it all ends with Game No. 272.

The NFL announced following Sunday night's 42-38 thriller between the 49ers and Bears that Week 18 will conclude with the Baltimore Ravens visiting the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The winner becomes the AFC North champion. The loser goes home.

These two franchises have never met in the last week of the season in a winner-take-all scenario. This year, they will.

The contest oozes with storylines. Mike Tomlin has coached the Steelers for 19 years. John Harbaugh is finishing his 18th with the Ravens. Will the coach of the losing team move on, voluntarily or otherwise?

It also could be the final game in the first-ballot Hall of Fame career of quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Likewise, it could be the last game for Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson in Baltimore, depending on the developments to come in the offseason.

Jackson, as reported during NBC's Football Night in America, is currently believed to be a shade under 50-50 to play with a back contusion suffered last Sunday night against the Patriots. Steelers linebacker T.J. Watt is viewed as a long shot, due to his ongoing recovery from surgery to repair a partially collapsed lung.

It's a playoff play-in game. With potentially very high stakes for both teams, both coaches, both quarterbacks. And it's a perfect way to end the 2025 regular season.