The Seattle Seahawks need the Carolina Panthers to win (or tie) against the Atlanta Falcons next week in order to have a chance to make the playoffs. An Atlanta win ends Seattle’s season, no matter what the Seahawks do against the Arizona Cardinals.
With this scenario came the very legitimate concern that the Panthers could potentially have nothing to play for, as a New Orleans Saints win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers would clinch the NFC South, and lock Carolina into the #5 seed. The NFL is aware of this, so in the finalized Week 17 schedule, Panthers-Falcons, Saints-Buccaneers, and Cardinals-Seahawks will all be 1:25 PM PT kickoffs.
Of importance on a wider scale, this year’s playoff scenarios mean that there will NOT be a Sunday Night Football game to cap off the regular season.
“We felt that both from a competitive standpoint and from a fan perspective, the most fair thing to do is to schedule all Week 17 games in either the 1 p.m. or 4:25 p.m. ET windows,” said NFL Senior Vice President of Broadcasting Howard Katz in a press release. “This ensures that we do not have a matchup on Sunday Night Football on New Year’s Eve that because of earlier results has no playoff implications for one or both of the competing teams.”
