The original plan for Monday Night Football in Week 15 was simply to watch the Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings flounder around in between fruitless discussions over which would fire their head coach first. Thanks to a recent spike in positive Covid-19 tests across the league, we’re getting two games instead. On Monday AND Tuesday. It’s a double-header of double-header weeknight football.
That means a battle that will determine whether the Cleveland Browns vault into a tie for first place in the AFC North or sink to its basement will join the slate Monday. Cleveland opted to move its Week 15 game from Saturday thanks to what would have been a barebones roster. This was news to the Las Vegas Raiders, who were hoping to collect an easy win — whether that meant traveling to Ohio or not.
They still may have that opportunity, even if they’ll have to take the field. Cleveland’s Covid reserve list will take 18 players off the field along with head coach Kevin Stefanski. That includes the team’s top two quarterbacks and multiple starters on either side of the ball.
So our appetizer course for a primetime game between two teams with losing records in a division that’s already been decided is a showdown between a Raiders team on a 1-5 skid and a Browns club forced into playing its JV unit.
Ew.
Well, maybe things will turn out better that we expect. If nothing else, it’ll be better than Sunday night’s game. All odds via Tipico.