There are two games happening in the NFL on Monday, but only one of them will be able to be watched by the entire country. Monday night’s 49ers-Bills game (which is a San Francisco home game being played in Glendale, Arizona) is your standard ESPN Monday Night Football broadcast.
However, Fox has the Washington Football Team against the Pittsburgh Steelers, a game happening right now, but much of the country is not able to watch because it was originally a regional 1 p.m. ET kickoff and, because of the NFL’s deal with DirecTV for NFL Sunday Ticket, it remained a regional telecast even as it moved to a standalone Monday afternoon kickoff.
The areas in red are currently slated to get WFT-Steelers on Fox on Monday. https://t.co/XEfUi7NCgZ pic.twitter.com/vGnbEdqpGA
— 506 Sports (@506sports) December 3, 2020
Yes, that’s exactly what it is. The earlier rescheduled games that went national ate into the minimum number of games the NFL is contractually supposed to provide Sunday Ticket, and this is how they made it up to them. https://t.co/9xv8QpD7p2
— 506 Sports (@506sports) December 7, 2020
DirecTV customers can watch the game on channel 712, per CBS, regardless of whether they have Sunday Ticket or not, but for anyone without DirecTV, you best be living in one of those red areas on the above map. If you don’t, well, you’re likely reading this post in frustration because your current option on Fox is the evening news or, as is the case here on the west coast, Judge Judy.
The good news is for anyone that wanted to watch tomorrow’s rescheduled Cowboys-Ravens game, since that was already slated to be a national window broadcast on Thursday night, that will be available to all. Until then, we return to the dark ages of yesteryear in which an NFL game is happening and there is no way for you to watch it (legally) or even have check-ins on RedZone.