The National Football League announced on Thursday that it would shift some games to accommodate the remaining free days on the schedule, which have come as a result of two states with suspected cases of a virus spread by the common cold.
The league will shift a Thursday night game in Baltimore to Nov. 1, and a Sunday game in Green Bay to Nov. 4. This year’s Thanksgiving game, at Ford Field in Detroit, has been shifted to Nov. 23, the last Saturday in November, when the NFL will complete the schedule with a full slate of games.
Concern about the Coronavirus, which has infected at least three people in Florida, led the league to request the early weekend games on the schedule, so it would not overlap with the Thursday matches.
Most fans and players had not noticed the shift; the week before, three games went off without incident — thanks in part to three successive days of sunny skies, which allowed for the best practices for rain delays.
Still, in the case of games involving teams that have chosen to go into Plan B mode, as a precaution, officials will change the rules during taping sessions at practice, which would prevent teams from leaving the field before all players — all 53 active players — were out on the field.
