The NFL announced Thursday they are moving the 4:15 p.m. Sunday kickoffs to 4:25 p.m. to reduce overlap with the 1 p.m. games. (The 4:05 p.m. game times will not change.)
The league released the following statement:
“In researching the kickoff time shift, the NFL analyzed games from the 2009-11 seasons and found that 44 games required part of the audience to be switched to a mandatory doubleheader game kickoff. With a 4:25 PM ET kickoff time, that number that would have been reduced by 66 percent to only 15 games. Approximately 40 games over the full 2012 season will be impacted by the 10-minute kickoff time shift -- with half of those moves coming in games played in Mountain or Pacific time zones with 1:25 PM or 2:25 PM local starts.”
Locally, this will impact the start time of two Patriots’ games this season -- the Week 5 (Oct. 7) home game against the Broncos and Week 7 (Oct. 21) home game against the Jets. Both will now start at 4:25 p.m. instead of 4:15 p.m.
For more Patriots news, check out weei.com/patriots [1].
Links:
[1] http://www.weei.com/teams/patriots/home
[2] http://www.weei.com/category/boston/patriots