Blackout Lifted

Blackout Lifted Fearless Prediction #2

Written by Synergy Legal, Inc. on 1:46 PM

Now that Opening Night is set, next comes the guesswork. Today I'll predict the Sunday Night Football matchup for Week 1. The best way to do this is through a process of elimination. Let's eliminate the teams that we can be almost certain won't be selected. This is primarily based on 2008 records. While recent history has shown that is not the best indicator of success for 2009, it is all we have to base projections on at this point; and is why the NFL and its broadcast networks instituted the late season flex-schedule a couple years back. But for the early season we only have last year to go on. Here is who I am very confident won't be featured in Week 1's Sunday Night Football game.

• Pittsburgh Steelers (they get Opening Night game on Thursday)
• Tennessee Titans (same as Pittsburgh)
• Detroit Lions (bwahahahaha)
• St. Louis Rams and Kansas City Chiefs (went a combined 4-28 in 2008)
• Cincinnati Bengals and Cleveland Browns (Ohio was barely better than Missouri)
• Seattle Seahawks (4-12)
• Jacksonville Jaguars and Oakland Raiders (both 5-11)
• Green Bay Packers (6-10)
• Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers (7-9)
• Houston Texans (8-8 and not a big ratings draw)

That's 14 teams out of the running. Now I'm going to go out on a limb just a bit and eliminate a few others. These teams were .500 or better, but missed the playoffs and may not have enough attractive qualities to pull in the Opening Week ratings the NFL and NBC want.

• New Orleans Saints
• Washington Redskins
• Denver Broncos
• New York Jets
• Tampa Bay Buccaneers

That leaves 13 teams. Taking those 13 teams we can piece together possible matchups using the scheduled opponents for each team in 2009. I'm going to play a hunch here and predict that the NFL will want an interconference matchup for this game (more on why in the next post). And I also think they are going to want to give some exposure to the 2008 NFC Champion Arizona Cardinals. Given their scheduled opponents, here is Prediciton #2.

Fearless Prediction #2: Sunday Night Football-Season Premier; Sunday September 13, 2009, 8:30pm ET on NBC, Indianapolis Colts at Arizona Cardinals