When you play a season outside in fall and winter, weather can affect the games.
We've seen the NFL have to play a Tuesday night game, play at neutral sites with fans given free tickets to come watch, or even postpone a game for a couple months and shuffle bye weeks. So the league has contingency plans, and already has one for the Washington Redskins-Philadelphia Eagles game at Landover, Md. for this Sunday because Hurricane Joaquin.
"This could be a significant event, a possible disaster for this region. I think folks need to start looking at it that way," Jeff Orrock, Meteorologist-in-Charge at the National Weather Service Station in Wakefield, Va. told DelmarvaNow. "This could be an event that a lot of folks in this region have never experienced."
We've seen the best weather predictions turn out wrong, so who knows if Sunday's NFC East game will be affected. At very least it seems like if it's played it will be in less-than-ideal conditions. If Joaquin hits the East Coast on Sunday the game could be affected "by very strong winds, potentially even hurricane-force gusts, and the threat for flooding rainfall," CBS chief meteorologist Kate Bilo told NJ.com. Even if the game is moved a day or two it probably would be wet and messy; DelmarvaNow said there's a "seven-day forecast for rain" with some parts of the region possibly getting 11 inches of rain. There's one easy solution that fantasy players won't love hearing, but it's simply punting the game to Nov. 1. Both teams have their byes that week. If the NFL grows too concerned about the hurricane hammering that region, it's an easy fix, scheduling wise.
“Well, we’ll wait until Sunday to know what exactly is going to happen,” Philadelphia coach Chip Kelly said, according to the Washington Post, “but it’s something that we’ve been monitoring.”
Although, again, weather predictions don't always come true, it seems like the most unlikely option is the game will kick off under sunny skies as scheduled at 1 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday.
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