10 Greatest Football Movies of All Time to Watch Before Thanksgiving, Ranked

Published Nov 11, 2026, 4:54 PM EST Ben Brewster is a filmmaker, critic, screenwriter, and actor whose work sits at the intersection of film culture, craft analysis, and storytelling. He is a movie list contributing writer at Collider and a contributing writer for High on Films, where he covers contemporary cinema, independent film, and festival releases with an eye toward narrative structure, performance, and visual language. Ben is an active film festival participant, having worked with Newport Film, the Nantucket Film Festival and as a screener for the Austin, Boston & Woodstock film festivals. He brings to that work a programming instinct shaped by years of close engagement with independent and documentary cinema. This comes with a deep investment in the kinds of films that rarely find their way into the mainstream conversation without someone willing to advocate for them. His background spans documentary and narrative filmmaking, film marketing, and production, including work with award-winning directors. This as well as developing his own indie production company, Lilac Creative Studio, through which he develops and produces original work across fiction and nonfiction forms. His debut documentary, Diamond in the Rust, is an examination of economic redevelopment and displacement in the Queens area of New York City. The film was recently accepted to the Unisphere Film Festival, the Defense of Democracy Film Festival, and the Urbanite Arts & Film Festival. This would mark his first festival recognition as a director. In addition to his writing and programming work, Ben hosts Beneath the Bloom, a film podcast exploring the work behind the scenes in cinema, and the struggles one can face to make a movie become a reality. The show reflects the same sensibility that runs through all of his work. A conviction that film is not merely entertainment but one of the most powerful tools human beings have for understanding each other. Across mediums, his work is driven by a deep belief in film as a communal, transformative art form. Sign in to your Collider account Thanksgiving week is stacked with a football slate, as it seemingly has always been. The NFL has scheduled five games in three days for the first time ever. The eventful holiday weekend begins with the Packers at Rams on Netflix on Wednesday the 25th, and ends with the Broncos at Steelers on Black Friday. The Thursday triple-header brings the Bears at Lions, Eagles at Cowboys and Chiefs at Bills. It's a lot of downtime with family, and a lot of time for football and movies. So I decided to combine the two. The ten movies below cover pretty much every flavor of football, from prison yard scrappy comedy to a Superbowl terror plot. They span 1971 to 2014, and include true stories, a literary thriller adaptation and a TV movie that made an entire sports generation cry. I ranked them by how well they hold up on a rewatch, which rewards the stronger character work over box office value and the flashier trophy-like blockbusters of the football film. A few notes on the edges. Jerry Maguire spends most of its time with an agent, but football runs through every scene. Several connect to this week's games, from the Bears in Brian's Song to the Cowboys and Steelers in Black Sunday. The Longest Yard is the 1974 original with Burt Reynolds, while the Sandler 2005 remake takes a seat on the bench. So, in between kickoffs, here are some iconic football flicks to put on while the turkey rests and the stuffing settles. 10 'The Longest Yard' (1974) Image via Paramount Pictures Picture a prison yard in the sun, a warden with a plan, and a disgraced quarterback who knows he is being used. Robert Aldrich directed The Longest Yard, and Burt Reynolds built a movie star persona on Paul Crewe, a former pro quarterback with a sneer and a bruised ego. He was thrown out for shaving points, and the warden wants him to now put together an inmate team for a game against the guards. He pressures Crewe into organizing it, and he ends up getting the strongest and angriest convicts he can find. The inmates call themselves the Mean Machine, and they relish every chance they get to hit a guard. The training sequences give the movie a fun and rowdy charm. Ed Lauter plays the head guard, Captain Knauer, with a snarl and menacing grin. Aldrich keeps the camera very close to the action, so the audience feels up tight with the game's most violent hits. The warden expects his guards to win and Crewe's early willingness to go along puts him at odds with his own teammates. Michael Conrad, an old football coach in the yard, gives the team a crusty voice of experience. Ray Nitschke, the Green Bay Packers linebacker, appears as an inmate for those Packer fans gearing up for Wednesday night. 9 'Rudy' (1993) Everett Collection Rudy Ruettiger grows up in a big family in a steel town, where the normal trajectory is to work at the local mill and keep your head down. His father and brothers do so, but Rudy's less inclined. He fully wakes up when a close friend's death at work makes him bolt for South Bend on a bus with little more than a dream. Sean Astin plays him with a squint of determination, a kid who stands about five foot six and keeps a Notre Dame pennant on his wall. He naturally cannot get in right away, so he enrolls at nearby Holy Cross Junior College, where a priest helps him with his grades. David Anspaugh directs from Angelo Pizzo's script, and the two had already made Hoosiers together, which should tell you everything about their creative tone of voice. Charles S. Dutton is warm and gruff as the Notre Dame groundskeeper who gives Rudy a job. He gives him some of the best advice in the movie amidst the scout team practices, where Rudy keeps getting knocked around daily. Vince Vaughn, in an early role, appears as one of the Notre Dame players. Late in the story, the players lay their jerseys on the coach's desk, so Rudy can dress for the final game, and the chants begin from there. Rudy finally dresses for the last game, gets in for a few plays, and sacks the quarterback to end it, just as the real Ruettiger did. The crowd chants his name some more as his teammates carry him off, and Jerry Goldsmith's music swells to match every emotional beat. 8 'The Waterboy' (1998) Image via Buena Vista Pictures Bobby Boucher has the world's strangest job. He hauls water for a college football program, and Adam Sandler plays him with a squeaky voice and a heart full of passion. Bobby lives in the Louisiana bayou with his Mama, played by Kathy Bates, who is convinced that football is a sin and girls are traps. He promptly loses his job and lands at South Central Louisiana State University, where Henry Winkler's Coach Klein is in desperate need of a spark. A locker room tease turns Bobby into a human wrecking ball, and the Mud Dogs have finally gotten their defense back. Frank Coraci directs and lets the jokes run wild, from the over-the-top swamp accents to the oddly specific rules Mama sets down. Fairuza Balk plays Vicki, a childhood friend with a bad reputation but whose loyalty to Bobby never wavers. The movie grossed more than $160 million domestically on a fairly modest budget. Its quotes spread through schoolyards and dorm rooms for years after its release. The Mud Dogs' games get bigger and louder as the season goes on, and Bobby's anger becomes the biggest laugh. The movie pokes fun at college football's culture of worshiping its stars, and it shows little mercy in doing so. 7 'Black Sunday' (1977) Image via Paramount Pictures Black Sunday starts with a raid in Beirut, then moves to the Superbowl. John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate) adapted the novel for the screen, and Robert Shaw, fresh off of Jaws, plays Mossad agent David Kabakov. Kabrakov is opposite Bruce Dern's Michael Lander, a Goodyear blimp pilot and Vietnam veteran who has lost faith in everything. Dern plays Lander as a bitter man who has been passed over and ignored. Marthe Keller is chilling as a Black September operative who recruits Lander for the mission and convinces him of its justification. Their target is Super Bowl X in Miami, and the weapon is the blimp itself. Frankenheimer directs it like a procedural, with stakeouts, tips and a countdown. He shot the climax inside the Orange Bowl during the real Super Bowl X between the Steelers and Cowboys. The crowd of over 80,000 is one of the more elaborate stunts of that era and gives the finale a scale most thrillers cannot come close to. The legendary John Williams wrote the score, and its brass swells over the blimp's final approach. Black Sunday asks its audience to imagine the worst day in sports, and it takes the question with a deep seriousness. 6 'Draft Day' (2014) Image via Summit Entertainment Ivan Reitman, best known for Ghostbusters, directed Draft Day, and Kevin Costner plays Sonny Weaver Jr., the Cleveland Browns general manager. The movie takes course over one day, as Weaver hopes to make the biggest trade of his career. Sonny's father, the former Browns coach, has just passed, and the weight of that loss colors every decision. Costner has a long sports resume, with Bull Durham, Field of Dreams and Tin Cup, and he is comfortable living in the psyche of these kinds of men. Frank Langella plays the owner who pushes for a flashy move, and Denis Leary plays Coach Penn, who wants Sonny to stay out of his way. Reitman uses split screens and a ticking clock to foster the tension in the room. Jennifer Garner plays Ali, whose news about their personal life complicates a stressful day. Sonny trades the Browns' future picks to move up to the top of the draft. He then quickly second guesses himself when he takes a closer look at the quarterback everyone loves. He is drawn to linebacker Vontae Mack (Chadwick Boseman), whose character impresses Weaver more than the scouting report. Terry Crews plays running back Earl Penn, and Tom Welling is the incumbent quarterback, Brian Drew. Real NFL figures, including Commissioner Roger Goodell, appear as well, and the draft's logos are everywhere. 5 'The Blind Side' (2009) Image via Warner Bros. Pictures John Lee Hancock adapted Michael Lewis's book, with Quinton Aaron starring as Michael Oher, a gentle giant who has spent his life moving from home to home. The Blind Side uses the famous Lawrence Taylor hit on Joe Theismann to explain why the left tackle is such a crucial position to a football team's success. Sandra Bullock is Leigh Anne Tuohy, a Memphis interior designer with a Southern drawl and a steel spine. She spots Michael walking in the cold on Thanksgiving night and brings him home. Tim Mcgraw plays her husband, a fast food franchise owner with a soft spot for Ole Miss football, and Kathy Bates is his school tutor. Bullock netted an Oscar for Best Actress and the movie got a nomination for Best Picture. It ended up grossing more than $300 million, making it one of the biggest sports movies ever. Michael Oher became a first round pick of the Baltimore Ravens in 2009. Real college coaches such as Nick Saban appear while they recruit Michael. The real Michael filed a court petition in 2023 claiming he was never formally adopted by the Tuohys, while the family fully disputes the account. 4 'Jerry Maguire' (1996) Image Via TriStar Pictures Cameron Crowe's script starts with a sports agent typing a mission statement in the middle of the night about caring for clients. He's fired the next day and nearly everyone abandons him. Tom Cruise plays Jerry as a charming man whose honesty ends up costing him his lifestyle. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Rod Tidwell, the Arizona Cardinals receiver who becomes Jerry's last client and demands to be shown the money. Jonathan Lipnicki's Ray famously tells Jerry that the human head weighs eight pounds. Kelly Preston plays Jerry's fiancée and Jay Mohr plays the rival agent who smiles while he steals away his clients. Football appears around the edges, with Rod's Cardinals playing on Monday night and a college quarterback prospect named Frank Cushman anchoring the early scenes. The movie runs on lines people still quote, including "You had me at hello," and Rod's celebration after a big touchdown catch gets a huge laugh. Gooding won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, Cruise earned a Best Actor nomination and the movie itself got a nomination for Best Picture. Jerry Maguire grossed more than $270 million, and is engrained in pop culture for all of its quotable moments. 3 'Remember the Titans' (2000) Image via Buena Vista Pictures In 1971, Alexandria, Virginia, integrated its high schools, and the T.C. Williams football team became front page news. Denzel Washington is new head coach Herman Boone, a stern black man hired over the beloved white coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton). Yoast agrees to stay on as an assistant, and the two fight before they learn to respect each other. Wood Harris is defensive end Julius Campbell, and Ryan Hurst stars as All-American Gerry Bertier, two teammates who start out at odds and end up as brothers. Ethan Suplee, Donald Faison, Kip Pardue, and Ryan Gosling round out the young but remarkably talented cast. The training camp at Gettysburg College in Remember the Titans is a focal point. Coach Boone puts the players through rigorous drills till the early hours of the morning and gives a memorable speech about the historical battlefield beneath them and the men involved who sacrificed their lives. The team's chants, including the famous call of "left side, strong side," give it an emotional depth and tonal richness. The soundtrack mixes 1970s hits with a stirring score by Trevor Rabin that keeps the energy high. Real events were reshaped for the screen, but the 1971 team did go undefeated and win the state championship. The movie ended up grossing more than $136 million and stands the test of time as a classroom and football season favorite. 2 'Brian's Song' (1971) Image via ABC Brian's Song aired on ABC on November 30th 1971, marking this year as its 55th anniversary right after Thanksgiving. It is a TV movie that people still talk about like a theatrical classic. James Caan plays Brian Piccolo, a bold, slightly resentful undrafted free agent out of Wake Forest who plays his way onto the Chicago Bears. Billy Dee Williams is Gale Sayers, a quiet yet gifted star. The two begin as fierce rivals playing the same position and grow into good friends after Sayers tears up his knee. Piccolo helps him rehab, and their unlikely friendship becomes the story's center. When Piccolo is diagnosed with cancer, the movie follows his decline with a restraint that surprised audiences at the time. Sayer's speech for the George Halas Award is dedicated to Piccolo, and it's a moment that audiences remember decades later. Brian's Song won multiple Emmys and a Peabody Award. The Bears of the movie travel to Detroit on Thanksgiving Day, which gives the classic a timely connection. A 2001 remake starred Sean Maher and Mekhi Phifer, but most fans still talk about the original. 1 'Friday Night Lights' (2004) Image Via Universal Pictures Friday Night Lights starts in Odessa, Texas, where the high school football team is the town's biggest event. Billy Bob Thornton is coach Gary Gaines, a man who gets called out at the grocery store when the team loses. Derek Luke plays running back Boobie Miles, a talented kid whose knee injury changes the course of the season. Lucas Black is the quarterback and Garrett Hundland is a kid whose father (Tim McGraw) pushes him a little too hard and wears his old championship glory like a warrior's armor. Peter Berg directs with handheld cameras that put you on the sideline. The score by Explosions in the Sky and David Torn gives the movie a dreamy, restless sound. H.G. Bissinger's book about the 1988 Permian Panthers supplies the story, and Berg keeps the film close to its real people. Connie Britton stars as Sharon Gaines, the coach's wife, and she would later become famous as Tami Taylor on the TV series. The season ends at Texas Stadium, and Gaines's pregame speech about being perfect is regarded as the movie's most recognized sequence. The TV series premiered on NBC in 2006, and a Peacock reboot is currently on pause. Release Date October 8, 2004 Cast Lucas Black Mike Winchell