NFL Spin Zone
Fansided

NFL adding Monday night game to Super Wild Card Weekend

By Cody Williams

Jan 4, 2020; Houston, Texas, USA; A view of the Wild Card logo before the AFC Wild Card NFL Playoff game between the Houston Texans and the Buffalo Bills at NRG Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports
Jan 4, 2020; Houston, Texas, USA; A view of the Wild Card logo before the AFC Wild Card NFL Playoff game between the Houston Texans and the Buffalo Bills at NRG Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports /
facebooktwitterreddit

The NFL is making more of a show of the opening playoff weekend as they’ll not just have six games for Super Wild Card Weekend but one will move to Monday.

It was a big change to the NFL Playoffs last year when the league added an additional team that would make the postseason, thus giving only one team a bye in each conference and having three Wild Card games per conference. The result was Super Wild Card Weekend with three games on both Saturday and Sunday to kick off the playoffs.

Now, the NFL has more changes for the opening round of the playoffs — at least in terms of the broadcast schedule.

On Friday, the league officially announced that Super Wild Card Weekend would conclude with a Monday night game as opposed to on Sunday night. This means there will be two games on Saturday (one late afternoon, one night) and three contests on Sunday (one early, one late afternoon, one night) before the Monday night finale.

The biggest initial concern about this change in format was a potential competitive advantage for the Monday winner who would be playing in the Divisional Round on a short week. However, Albert Breer of the MMQB reported that the winner of that game would play on Sunday the following week.

What network will broadcast the Monday game for Wild Card Weekend of the NFL Playoffs?

In their announcement, the NFL noted that CBS and NBC would each broadcast two games on Super Wild Card Weekend while FOX and ABC/ESPN would each get one game apiece. With that said, it remains unclear which network will get the Monday night finale to the opening playoff weekend.

ABC/ESPN would make a lot of sense given that they already hold the Monday Night Football broadcast rights. For familiarity’s sake, that would go one and one. But then again, perhaps the league wants to switch it up for the playoffs.

Next. 20 Bold predictions for NFL Week 3. dark

In any case, it will be interesting to see how this moves forward. As NFL fans, it’s exciting that we now get an extra day of action for Super Wild Card Weekend. But we’ll see if players, coaches and so on end up feeling the same way.

Home/NFL