Sign up for our special edition newsletter to get a daily update on the coronavirus pandemic.
The NFL is headstrong about preparing for its traditional 16-game schedule, but it left a few coronavirus-necessitated contingencies for anyone on the lookout.
Dates, times and matchups for all 256 regular-season games beginning Sept. 10 and ending Jan. 3 were revealed Thursday night despite NFL facilities still under lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic and with teams conducting virtual practices this month.
The NFL has not publicly entertained hypotheticals of a shortened schedule or holding fan-less games and warned teams via internal memo against speculation on such scenarios for risk of creating confusion among fans and sponsors.
But connecting the dots on the composite NFL schedule suggests …
1. Weeks 3 and 4 are the most likely to get wiped out if the NFL needs to drop to 14 games. There are no protect-at-all-cost division games in either week and all 32 teams are home once and away once during that span. There had been speculation of no conference games in the first four weeks, but the slate for Weeks 1 and 2 are chock-full of conference and division games that could be played in place of Weeks 3 and 4 or at the end of the season.
2. All teams are home once and away once in Weeks 1 and 2, as well. So, if the NFL needed to play a 12-game season, all schedules would be balanced with six home and six away games. The 49ers, Titans, Cowboys and Steelers are the first teams with back-to-back home games, in Weeks 5 and 6.
3. All Week 2 opponents share the same bye week later in the season, so if those games are postponed there is an easy trap door where teams could lose their bye week.
4.ESPN reported Super Bowl LV in Tampa Bay could be pushed back by any number of weeks from Feb. 7.
After 9/11, the NFL canceled its Week 2 slate and rescheduled those games for the final week of the regular season. Because there was no bye week between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl, the entire playoff schedule was pushed back one week, including the first end date in February. The Pro Bowl now is played during a bye week before the Super Bowl, but that could be canned with little uproar.
