Over the past few years, the NFL has used the annual meetings as a vehicle for announcing the prime-time games to be played in Week One, and the trio of games held on Thanksgiving.
This year, the announcement was schedule for Monday. On Monday, the league advised the media that the announcement would be moved to Tuesday.
Now, John McClain of the Houston Chronicle reports that the announcement has been scuttled.
So what’s going on? In our estimation, the games can’t be announced until the rest of the schedule is set. And, apparently, the rest of the schedule isn’t set -- possibly due to last week’s decision that the Giants and the Jets will each host a game in Week One. More specifically, it’s possible that the compromise was hastily arranged in the wake of the coin-flip flap, and that the league has thereafter encountered difficulties in working out the balance of the schedule in an acceptable way.
Regardless of the reason, it’s a strange development for a league that prides itself on being organized and timely.
So now we play the waiting game. Usually, the full schedule is announced in April. Given today’s development, we’re not prepared to make any further assumptions regarding the release of the full schedule.