John Clayton, former ESPN reporter, and current radio Seattle radio host broke some news on Tuesday. He said that every team will play their counterpart in the other conference for the first four weeks. This is a move to protect the NFL if they need to cancel games due to COVID-19. NFL is moving full-speed ahead and sent out memos on how to bring people back into their offices. If this does happen, the Packers are playing the AFC South for September. For the final three months, they will play six division games plus two more against the NFC.

While I didn’t predict this when I created my schedule for The Daily Tap podcast, I saw Tennessee in Week 1 is a real possibility. CBS has the late game for Week 1, and Packers-Titans feels like a legit way to kick off CBS’ coverage. As mentioned on the podcast, CBS loves themselves Green Bay. The schedule works itself out simply from there too considering the Packers’ request that they were playing on the road during the Ryder Cup and the Wisconsin-Notre Dame. Packers will have Week 2 versus Jacksonville in likely noon start then take on Houston and Indianapolis in the next two weeks.

Both Houston and Indianapolis can be primetime games. There will have to be some haggling between the networks if this does happen. Deshaun Watson versus Aaron Rodgers for the first time is a better and bigger draw than Rodgers versus Phil Rivers. That would be my primetime bet out of those two games. The question is how will the rest of the NFL look for those four weeks?

There are fun matchups all over the place which means the league will be okay. It wouldn’t shock me if they put together something like ‘rivalry week’ in mid-October. Games that caught my eye in these four-week periods -> Ravens-Eagles, Cowboys-Ravens, Browns-Cowboys, Eagles-Browns, Steelers-Cowboys, Rams-Patriots, Saints-Raiders, Buccaneers-Raiders, Patriots-Seahawks, 49ers-Patriots, Chiefs-Saints. These are all great primetime options.

Look forward to seeing the schedule later this evening.

Charlie.