The National Football League is reducing its preseason schedule for 2020 according to Mike Florio of NBC Sports. Each team will now play only two games instead of four games in a report from Wednesday. The reason for the decision is related to coronavirus. There are currently a whopping 2,782,539 cases of coronavirus in the United States with 130,856 deaths. There are also 1,486,477 active cases.
The preseason weeks that will be cancelled are the first and fourth weeks on the schedule. We do not know as of yet if the exhibition games scheduled for the second and third weeks will have a change in date.
The bottom line is that the NFL could easily go without any preseason games, and not many fans would miss them. Even the hardcore football fans like myself would just not miss the preseason. Heck, I think I have watched less than 30 seconds of preseason NFL in the last two decades. I have seen three preseason Canadian Football League games in 30 years because I was given the tickets.
One major reason for the lack of excitement or interest of preseason games is the fact that coaches rarely actually try to win them. They use the games as more of an evaluation of talent than anything else.
The real action starts September 10 with week 1 of the regular season. The Kansas City Chiefs are hosting the Houston Texans in a rematch of the AFC Divisional Playoff. In a remarkable comeback, the Chiefs came back from a 24-0 deficit to beat the Texans 51-31. Kansas City would then go on to defeat the Tennessee Titans and San Francisco 49ers to win their second Super Bowl in franchise history.
