The NFL is making plans for the 2020 season and is taking into consideration how the coronavirus pandemic could impact it.
A report by Sports Business Daily says the league has multiple contingency plans. One could push the Super Bowl from its current scheduled date of Feb. 7 in Tampa as late as Feb. 28.
A Super Bowl that kicks off on Feb. 28.
A regular season that starts as late as Thursday, Oct. 15.
An NFL season with no bye weeks or Pro Bowl.
These are all contingencies that the NFL has considered as the league moves forward with its plans to hold a full regular season.
The report adds schedule-markers are in the process of working on options. The schedule was expected to be released by May 9. The SBD report suggests it will look like a standard 16-game, 17-week slate, but it will be designed to allow for several steps that could become necessary depending on the state of the pandemic.
In one version, the start of the season could be delayed by up to five weeks with relatively few adjustments. Such a scenario would have Super Bowl LV, currently set for Feb. 7, 2021 in Tampa, pushed back by three weeks.
Two weeks of early-season games could be shifted wholesale to the end of the season. A third week would feature teams only playing opponents with the same bye week, so that week could be cut and byes eliminated leaguewide.
These contingency-laden plans also include cutting the weekend between the conference championships and the Super Bowl, where the Pro Bowl is typically played, to allow another week to be lost to delays. Under such a plan, the Pro Bowl would not be played.
Sources caution that none of the plans are final, and nothing has been ruled out.