Get ready to spend late Sunday afternoons and evenings on your couch in mid-January. On Wednesday, the NFL made a change to the divisional round playoff schedule, moving the Sunday slate back approximately two hours each.
Divisional playoff games on SUnday of divisional weekend -- start times will now be 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Like conference championship games.
— Judy Battista (@judybattista) May 22, 2019
Sunday's divisional round playoff games previously kicked off at 1 p.m. and 4:40 p.m. Eastern.
The idea behind this change is to provide the league more flexibility in using home teams from the Mountain and Pacific time zones in the early Sunday game, and to prevent those teams from playing at 10 or 11 a.m. in their "home" time zone if they have to travel to the east coast for a divisional round game.
The NFL also made changes to several other rules, such as banning three drills from use in training camp, amending the previously-changed rule regarding replay reviews of pass interference plays, and eliminating the so-called "single-header" rule in order to ensure that every market in the league sees three national TV games every Sunday.
