Green Bay Packers announced yesterday that friends and family will be allowed to be in Lambeau Field on Sunday night against the Chicago Bears. This has been a trend throughout the NFL and college football. Friends and family are allowed in the stands considering their close relationship with the players. For the NFL, it has been the first step to allowing fans into the stands. A majority of teams that have started with friends and family in the stands, it led to actual fans filling up the stadium. Will the Packers follow suit? If the numbers look good, it will happen.

While Lambeau Field is still closed on gamedays to ticketed fans, Sunday’s #CHIvsGB game will host a small group of #Packers employees & their household family to help evaluate COVID-19 protocols. https://t.co/ckx04SozT6

— Green Bay Packers (@packers) November 23, 2020

People will scoff at Green Bay’s idea of ‘wanting to test protocols’ but it makes sense. They have back-to-back home games in the next two weeks. They can have two weeks of seeing how things work with family and friends. Then make a decision for the Carolina game on December 19th or 20th (Potential of a Saturday game). It goes without saying but the cases around the area have been in a good spot too. If Wisconsin is still at its high case rate, friends and family will stay longer than two weeks. But yesterday, we started to see a bit of a flattening in Wisconsin. Whether that’s just a result of Monday’s numbers always being low or that Wisconsin has peaked will not be known until later this week.

It is also likely that other teams in the area will have their close eye on Green Bay. Wisconsin Badgers basketball, Marquette basketball, and the Milwaukee Bucks have already said no fans in attendance to start, but if the cases decrease plus see the results from the Packers, that could change in the coming weeks and/or months. Everything is fluid though. Things can change in an instant with this stuff.

Regardless, it will be good to have some ‘noise’ in Lambeau Field.

Charlie.