Because football is the only major sport that hasn’t been interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic and the NFL has plowed through its offseason as usual, there seems to be an assumption that it’ll continue to do so.
That type of thinking led the league office to prepare a full, normal 16-game schedule for the 2020 season — an audacious move when all 32 facilities currently are closed indefinitely. It comes out Thursday evening, about a month later than it typically has, though the NFL said it had been considering moving the highly anticipated annual release to May anyway.