| In today’s FOX Sports Insider: The 2020 NFL schedule is officially here, and the jam-packed slate is more than meets the eye … You could start writing a dissertation on the NFL’s role in American society and grow old and wrinkly by the time you got close to completion, such are the myriad ways in which it permeates our lives. Currently, however, the NFL is about to become a barometer reflecting the state of these uncertain times and our ability to either surge or creep back out from them. Not to overstate the importance of sports amid this unique era that demands perspective more than ever, but what professional football resembles in September will give you a good idea of how America is faring and how much control is being wrested from the grip of the novel coronavirus. |
If the league is back in full flow, with fans in some or all stadiums, then life will truly have returned to something close to normal, and the effects of the pandemic will have been assuaged more speedily than is currently suspected. If there are games taking place under extreme measures of player safety caution, with no fans and only limited personnel permitted inside the stadiums, then that’s how the country will be, too — taking tentative steps to a full recovery but with precaution still paramount. And if there are no games … yeah, we don’t want to think about that. Yet don’t be fooled into assuming the NFL isn’t thinking about it. While it takes a certain kind of sports nerd (I’m guilty as charged) to get excited about the formulaic intricacies of putting together a compilation of sporting fixtures, there is far more sophistication to this year’s process than meets the eye. Restoring normalcy is important, of course; so is the appearance of impending normality, and Thursday’s 2020 season rundown gave that. There are a number of fail safes to guard against a delayed campaign, but they don’t smack you in the face in a way that would further dampen the mood. In fact, it was all nuanced enough that you might not even have noticed. The trapdoors, as they have begun to be commonly known, are certainly there. Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged as much in a memo sent to teams earlier this week, stating, “It is impossible to project what the next few months will bring.” On Thursday, after the schedule was announced, the commissioner expanded on the NFL’s approach, saying that the league is prepared to make changes as necessary: “The release of the NFL schedule is something our fans eagerly anticipate every year, as they look forward with hope and optimism to the season ahead. In preparing to play the season as scheduled, we will continue to make our decisions based on the latest medical and public health advice, in compliance with government regulations, and with appropriate safety protocols to protect the health of our fans, players, club and league personnel, and our communities. We will be prepared to make adjustments as necessary, as we have during this off-season in safely and efficiently conducting key activities such as free agency, the virtual off-season program, and the 2020 NFL Draft.” Indeed, the NFL has reportedly thought through scenarios up to and including pushing back the Super Bowl, without having to make significant changes to the regular-season matchups. And the evidence is in the schedule. The empty weeks following the championship game, set for Feb. 7 in Tampa, provide an ultimate safety net, but there were other choices that required more intellectual dexterity — and which the NFL seems to have handled with aplomb. For example, every team has the same bye week as its Week 2 opponent. In Weeks 3 and 4, there are no division games. And all bye weeks, except for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Carolina Panthers, will be between Weeks 5 and 11. Therefore, in the event of a delayed start, a couple of things could happen. The missing group of weeks (say, Weeks 1 through 4) could be slotted neatly in at the back of the slate. And, if the new season opener came on a week where a team had a bye, the matchup against the initial Week 2 opponent could be added instead. Furthermore, big matchups have been dotted throughout the schedule, so whichever week or weeks needed to be adjusted, you’d get a marquee clash to kick things off. Truly, it feels like the NFL has all contingencies covered. Thursday was just a schedule release. It wasn’t football — but it felt like a whole lot more than just dates and team names. It offered a kind of promise, although perhaps not the sort that you would immediately think. The guarantee was not that the NFL is going to start on time or look anything close to what we have come to expect, but it was the strongest of assertions nevertheless. That the league is going to work firmly towards resuming on time, until it is told otherwise. Here’s what others have said … Judy Battista, NFL.com: “The NFL is used to piecing together its schedule around concert tours and papal visits. But in an incredibly abnormal offseason, this is a normal-looking schedule, kicking off on Sept. 10 with two of the most electrifying quarterbacks in the game and ending Feb. 7 with Super Bowl LV in Tampa. At the peak of schedule planning a few weeks ago, 2,400 cloud computers were used, and they generated 34,000 playable schedules. The NFL reviewed 289 of them by hand, trying to make happy an almost impossible combination of owners, coaches and television executives. The one selected does what all good schedules try to do: sprinkle the most anticipated matchups throughout the season.” Michael Mulvihill, FOX Sports EVP, Head of Strategy: “[Releasing the 2020 schedule] was mostly a logistical consideration. The league’s intention, and they’ve been very clear about saying this, is that they intend to play 16 games, with the bye week, and kick off on September 10. And if that’s their intention, then our intention as their partner is we have to start thinking about the mechanics of that now. We have to start putting together our crews, putting together our travel, and teams have to start thinking about when and how they’re going to open up their training camps. So I guess what I’ve been saying is that if the last two months have taught us anything, it’s that none of us have a crystal ball, and none of us know what the future might hold. Releasing this schedule isn’t about predicting the future, it’s about preparing for the future.” Frank Schwab, Yahoo Sports: “The Minnesota Vikings will travel to play at the New Orleans Saints in Week 16, on Friday, Dec. 25. That’s unusual. According to Pro Football Reference, there have been only 10 NFL games played on a Friday since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger. The NFL avoids playing on Fridays because it does not want to interfere with high school games. But there aren’t any on Christmas. Christmas games are a little more frequent for the NFL, but still rare. The league will move a bulk of its games to another day when Christmas lands on a Sunday. As a result, there have been only 21 NFL games on Christmas since the 1970 merger. If sports are running as usual by then, we could have a full day of NBA games with an NFL playoff rematch in the middle. Not bad.” |
