We have heard the laundry list of reasons why the NFL hasn’t moved games to a “Week 18” like the one that’s scheduled to be played on Wednesday (!) at 3:40 p.m. Eastern (!!) between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens.
As NBC Sports Washington’s Andrew Gillis noted, a postponement to Week 18 means both the Steelers and Ravens get a second bye week in the regular season. Playoff teams who don’t play in that extra added slate get two weeks off, which might be an advantage (recovery from injuries) or disadvantage (being rusty) depending on how you look at it.
There’s also the fact that if there’s a COVID-19 outbreak on a team ALREADY scheduled for Week 18 before then, there’s no wiggle room and you might get a canceled game that throws everything from draft positioning to playoff tie-breakers into possible chaos.
But we’re in a pretty chaotic place now. As my colleague Chris Korman detailed on Sunday, we had a Broncos game in which a practice squad wide receiver had to play quarterback, the Niners are moving to Arizona to play because their county banned contact sports at the moment and so much more.
It’s all a big mess.
The solution has been sitting there for weeks, and all the questions about competitive advantage and problems with scheduling that could arise can be solved with one answer: it’s 2020, a year and situation like no other.
The NFL decided to forge ahead this year and made a lot of mistakes along the way. We need a Week 18.
Plus, think about it from fans’ perspective: they would get an extra week of regular-season football to watch, with games that might have included Ravens-Steelers (with, presumably, a full Baltimore team with Lamar Jackson playing) and Broncos-Saints and so on. The same people who are excited to see a regular-season game on a Wednesday afternoon would be more than happy to get one more week of football with an AFC North matchup on the schedule.
Instead, we’re getting a game that feels shoehorned in, with the Ravens at a distinct disadvantage against a Steelers team that has repeatedly gotten the short end of the stick this season.
