Deshaun Watson and the Texans take on the Super Bowl champion Chiefs in the openerGETTY IMAGES
There is a "strong slate of Week One games" from the '20 schedule that the NFL unveiled on Thursday night, showing that the league is "fully planning to start the season on time, rather than potentially delay the start of the season because of the COVID-19 pandemic," according to Michael David Smith of PRO FOOTBALL TALK. The season-opening Texans-Chiefs game featuring Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes is "exactly the kind of showcase game the NFL would use to start the season with a bang -- not the kind of game the NFL would schedule if it feared Week One wasn't going to happen" (NBCSPORTS.com, 5/7). While the schedule concedes nothing to the coronavirus pandemic, it includes several key wrinkles that would make delays easier to accommodate. Every matchup in Week 2 involves teams who have the same bye week later on, so that week could be lost and rescheduled without pushing the season further. Additionally, all teams have one home and one away game in each of Weeks 1 and 2, and also in Weeks 3 and 4, allowing the league to cancel those two-week stretches or move them to the end of the year without creating unfairness. Meanwhile, no divisional games are scheduled in Weeks 3 and 4, making those likely targets to be canceled outright if necessary (Ben Fischer, THE DAILY).
SUPER BOWL HOLDS THE KEY: ESPN's Trey Wingo noted there is a "lot of speculation about flexibility being built into this year's schedule as we're all dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic." ESPN's Adam Schefter said there "really are no obvious trap doors built into the schedule." However, if the start of the season is delayed, the "early weeks could occur after Week 17." However, Super Bowl LV "holds the key to everything." There are "no active discussions" to push it back later in the year, and the head of the Super Bowl committee today indicated that is "not even an option right now." Schefter: "The league is proceeding as if it’s business as usual. But there are people around the league who believe that that would be the key, that the league could fold that Super Bowl back, push it back, and then take the early part of the season -- if any of it has to be missed -- and move that back later" ("2020 NFL Schedule Release," ESPN, 5/7).
