The NFL announced a significant change to its playoff schedule on Friday, and Tony Dungy is among those who believe it could become an issue.
With the playoffs having been expanded by one wild card team in each conference last year, the 2021 postseason will now feature a Monday night game. Of course, that means the winner of the game will be guaranteed to have to play a road game on short rest in the Divisional Round. Dungy said the NFL has always tried to avoid that scenario even in the regular season. He criticized the NFL for introducing it in the playoffs now.
The NFL always told me they tried to avoid having teams play on the road Monday night & the following Sunday-and they really tried to avoid doing that with the second team coming off a bye. Now we’re going to set up that possibility at the most important time-the playoffs. Why-$$ https://t.co/4c8NZQHzIS
— Tony Dungy (@TonyDungy) September 24, 2021
Obviously, a Monday night game will draw better ratings than a Saturday game. NFL fans are used to having a game on Monday night, so the schedule change won’t be an issue for them. It will, however, put the winning team at a disadvantage over teams that play on Saturday and Sunday.
Dungy certainly is not the only one from the NFL world who expressed concern about the schedule change.
