No NFL party on Dec. 31

THE NFL has announced there will be no Sunday night game on New Year’s Eve to ensure matchups with playoff implications that impact each other are played at the same time on the final week of the season.

The league said Sunday night all Week 17 games will begin at either 1 p.m. or 4:25 p.m. EST. The league moved Cincinnati-Baltimore, Buffalo-Miami, Jacksonville-Tennessee, Carolina-Atlanta and New Orleans-Tampa Bay to the latter time slot. “We felt that both from a competitive standpoint and from a fan perspective, the most fair thing to do is to schedule all Week 17 games in either the 1 p.m. or 4:25 p.m. ET windows,” NFL senior vice president of broadcasting Howard Katz said in a league statement. “This ensures that we do not have a matchup on Sunday Night Football on New Year’s Eve that because of earlier results has no playoff implications for one or both of the competing teams.”

This will be the first time since 1977 that the NFL regular season won’t end with a prime time TV broadcast. Every division except the NFC South has already been clinched. Both wild cards in the AFC are up for grabs between Baltimore, Tennessee, the Chargers and Buffalo, while Atlanta and Seattle are competing for the final NFC wild card.