In the latest reminder that Washington’s days as a premier NFL franchise are long behind it, the NFL schedule has excluded the team from prime time.
Washington plays on Thanksgiving afternoon at Dallas and otherwise plays exclusively on Sunday afternoons. According to the Washington Times, 2020 is the first season since 1982 without Washington playing a single game in prime time.
The 1982 season, when Washington would go on to win the Super Bowl, was a very different time in the NFL: Sunday Night Football and Thursday Night Football had not yet come along, so prime time games were limited to Mondays. And seven weeks of the season were canceled because of a players’ strike.
Washington still has a chance to get flexed into prime time on a Sunday night, so it’s possible that the prime time streak won’t come to an end. But that will require a surprise improvement that has the team in playoff contention late in the season, something they haven’t seen much of in Washington in recent years.