Who's sitting pretty for 2020 regular season?
The NFL's 2020 regularseason schedule is officially set ... seemingly in quicksand, the league hoping it can play a full slate even as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on. Here are some winners and losers from Thursday's reveal of this year's 256-game lineup:
WINNERS
Brady-Brees: The new rivalry between NFC South OG Drew Brees and the guy coming for the Saints' divisional throne and Brees' passing records, Tom Brady, gets an early start when New Orleans hosts the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on opening weekend. The rematch in Tampa comes on the "Sunday Night Football" stage in Week 9.
Brady 2.0: As you'd expect, TB12, now in "Tompa Bay," and his Bucs will be featured in five prime-time games. And his quarterback adversaries are quite a murderers' row, with two matchups apiece against Brees and former MVP Matt Ryan and two others against the Green Bay Packers' Aaron Rodgers and Kansas City Chiefs' Patrick Mahomes, league MVPs themselves.
Mike McCarthy: The Dallas Cowboys' new coach could have a soft re-entry into the league after his 2019 sabbatical. America's Team's opponents have a combined .459 winning percentage based on last year's records, the easiest outlook for any NFC team.
AFC North: Based on 2019 regular-season records, this division projects to have the easiest schedules, ones that include matchups with every AFC South and NFC East team. The Ravens
have the easiest lineup in the league (.438 opponent winning percentage in 2019), followed by the Pittsburgh Steelers (.457) with the Cleveland Browns owning the fourth-easiest docket (.461) league-wide.
Las Vegas: The Raiders will play their first official home game in Sin City on "Monday Night Football" in Week 2, the Silver and Black opening obsidian Allegiant Stadium – GM Mike Mayock referred to it as the "Death Star" – against the Saints. The game will also mark the 50th anniversary of MNF's 1970 debut. The Raiders will host three more prime-time games, including dates against Mahomes' Chiefs and Brady's Bucs.
LOSERS
Raiders: Better not spend too much time on the Strip, fellas. Your first season in Vegas includes five road games with 1 p.m. kickoffs in the Eastern time zone. Rams: They open SoFi Stadium – the new football palace in Inglewood, California – against the Cowboys, who hold training camp in Southern California and probably don't want the new building to upstage "Jerry World" in Texas. Sorry, Rams, but it's not like you don't know what it feels like being the less popular team at "home" in Los
Angeles.
International fans: For the first time since 2006, the NFL won't hold any games overseas, the league previously deciding to cancel the 2020 installment of the International Series – it would have included one game in Mexico City and four in London – due to the coronavirus.
AFC East: Not only will the division's four teams be racking up frequent flier miles with half their schedules earmarked against AFC West and NFC West teams, they'll also be facing stiff competition from west of the Mississippi. With an opponent winning percentage of .537 (based off 2019), the Patriots own the toughest schedule in the league. They'll have seven games against teams that won 10 or more games last year. The Jets have the secondtoughest schedule (.533), and the Dolphins have the third hardest (.529).
Contingency planning: Prior to the schedule's release, rampant speculation the league would design it in an easily modifiable manner depending on the pandemic's course. Yet aside from Week 2 matchups pitting teams with like bye weeks, no escape hatches are apparent. Should be interesting to see how the NFL adapts if forced to do so.