This week, the Green Bay Packers’ game will have another relatively limited broadcast footprint across the United States. The Packers travel to play the New York Giants in Sunday’s early time slot, with
the game to be broadcast on FOX. However, with CBS having the afternoon doubleheader, FOX has the rights to only broadcast a single game in each market this week and they have six games to show over the two afternoon slots.
Those factors, along with the fact that a different game (Chicago Bears vs. Minnesota Vikings) has the network’s top spot, means that most fans outside of Wisconsin and the New England area will need to find ways to watch the game other than tuning in on local FOX channels. Chicago vs. Minnesota gets the top broadcast pairing of Kevin Burkhardt and Tom Brady, and therefore has the biggest footprint outside of the west coast.
Out west, however, a pair of NFC West divisional games take up nearly the entire Pacific time zone. Seahawks-Rams is a game that would normally be worthy of flexing into Prime Time this week, if not for Sunday Night Football already featuring a top matchup with the Lions visiting the Eagles. Instead, the battle for the top of the NFC West gets buried on a busy Sunday afternoon FOX slate, up against another big AFC West game in Chiefs-Broncos on CBS.
Packers and Giants fans who can tune in for their teams’ game will hear Drew Brees make his NFL broadcast debut on FOX. Paired with Adam Amin, Brees is taking over the color commentary spot vacated by Mark Sanchez following his recent arrest in Indianapolis. Brees’ presence on the commentary team may explain why this game will be on FOX affiliates in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast areas of Mississippi and Alabama as well.
Here’s the broadcast map for the FOX games this week, with Packers-Giants shown in green. Bears-Vikings is in red, Panthers-Falcons in yellow, Texans-Titans in light blue, Seahawks-Rams in dark blue, and 49ers-Cardinals in orange.
