Super Bowl could be moved to March: Packers CEO

Green Bay Packers CEO Mark Murphy said in a new interview that the Super Bowl could be moved back to March amid calls for the NFL championship game to be delayed as coronavirus outbreaks force games to be postponed. 

“We prefer not to [move the game]. We’d like to play as much as possible the schedule as it sits now,” Murphy told Cheesehead TV earlier this week. “We had a league meeting this week and decided to cancel the Pro Bowl, so that was a fairly easy decision. That’s the week before the Super Bowl so it would be very easy to move everything back and create an 18th week.”

“We could move the Super Bowl back as far as four weeks,” he continued. “Obviously, we prefer not to do that but you do have that flexibility if we run into a number of outbreaks with different teams or we have to kinda move the schedule back.”

The NFL has already been forced to postpone several games this season due to positive COVID-19 tests, most recently involving the Tennessee Titans, which had a total of 24 positive tests within the organization.

The league also postponed a Week 5 matchup between Denver and New England after several Patriots, including quarterback Cam Newton, tested positive. Newton was reactivated last week.

The 2021 Super Bowl is currently scheduled for Feb. 7 in Tampa, Fla.

Other sports leagues have successfully carried out their seasons and postseasons, with the NHL completing its playoffs in two “bubble cities” in Toronto and Edmonton, and no positive cases since the league resumed play in late July.

The NBA has also avoided any coronavirus-related work stoppages while playing in a bubble on the Walt Disney World sports campus in Orlando, Fla.

Major League Baseball, which has played games in stadiums around the country since the league resumed play on July 23, dealt with two outbreaks early on with the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals. The outbreaks led both teams to postpone several games, but the league has since seen few cases and game postponements since, with the World Series currently underway before a limited capacity of 12,000 fans for each game in Arlington, Texas.