This Sunday afternoon the Green Bay Packers will play in one of the two major television network’s second-choice game in the late afternoon time slot, doing so for the second straight game. This week finds the Packers headed west to visit the Arizona Cardinals, and the location of the game in the western United States requires that the contest kick off in the late window. However, an NFC East matchup gets top billing between the two games that FOX has the rights to for the 3:25 PM Central slot.
That
other game is the Dallas Cowboys hosting the Washington Commanders, a contest that features divisional intrigue and big media markets. The NFC East always is a huge media draw, so it should come as no big surprise that FOX would pick that to be its top game when put head-to-head against Packers-Cardinals.
With that said, Green Bay’s game will be broadcast across most of the Midwestern USA, and certainly all throughout NFC North territory. Here is this week’s broadcast map from 506sports.com, with Packers-Cardinals shown in blue:
This game will be on local TVs all across the upper Midwest in part because the other three NFC North teams play at different times. In week 7, Minnesota and Chicago both have home games at 12 Noon Central, while the Detroit Lions face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday Night Football.
As always, fans who live in areas that will have Washington-Dallas on their local FOX affiliates will need to find alternate ways of watching the game, with NFL Sunday Ticket remaining the league’s approved method for watching out-of-market games.
After two straight weeks of being in a #2 game, Green Bay’s week 8 contest next Sunday will not be a concern for fans looking to pull the game in on local television. That contest will have the Packers in Pittsburgh to play the Steelers on Sunday Night Football, which will be a national broadcast to feature Aaron Rodgers’ first game against the team that drafted him. However, three of the four contests that fall between that game and Green Bay’s date with the Lions on Thanksgiving Day are set for the early time slot and will be up against multiple other games. As a result, now might be a worthwhile time to look into Sunday Ticket, particularly since the service now offers a month-to-month subscription plan.
