It’s the final week of the NFL regular season, but will we see the season off with Sunday Night Football?
With the final day of the year marking the final week of the NFL season, we’re all thinking the same thing. This season, despite the injuries to superstar players, has been one of the most wide open and interesting campaigns in recent history. On the NFC side of things, all but one team is returning to the playoffs (the Falcons), and there’s a decent chance the Minnesota Vikings become the first team to ever host a Super Bowl.
The chaos on the AFC side of things forced the NFL to adjust scheduling and pack all of the meaningful games into the 4:25pm ET window. So does this mean we’re going to be getting a Sunday Night Football game?
No.
Sunday Night Football was canceled this week — that’s not hyperbole, either. The NFL decided that there was no use for a Sunday night game given that too many games had playoff implications and no single game stood out as having more than another.
Typically there is a Sunday night game, so this isn’t a case where the NFL doesn’t want one playoff team to be at a slight time disadvantage. In years past, the Cowboys-Eagles have been penciled into this slot since it typically is a game that decides the division. Last year the Packers played the late slot to try and punch a playoff ticket but this year we won’t be having one of these matchups.
Frankly, this was for the best decision. Packing all of the meaningful games into the late window made for some very exciting football viewing. If that means sacrificing some Sunday Night Football in Week 17, then it was absolutely worth it.