Timing is everything in the NFL season

By STEVE KING

A 1 p.m. Sunday preseason game?

The Browns and New York Football Giants will play on Sunday afternoon at FirstEnergy Stadium.

Really?

Really?!

Ugh!

Double-ugh!!

I’m not a fan. Perhaps you are, but not me.

For years and years and years — even decades, a lot of decades, really — NFL preseason games have been played in the cool of late July, August and early September evenings, not Sunday afternoons in the heat of the day. And it will definitely be hot at FirstEnergy Stadium.

Related: A good comparison, but also a painful, scary one

A short distance away, in the heart of downtown, the Indians and Los Angeles Angels will be playing at 4:10 p.m. Saturday at Progressive Field. That is as it should be. Baseball is, in many ways, an afternoon sport, and has been for some time.

But not preseason football.

It just doesn’t sound right, or look right. It’s a little weird, actually.

But after 2020 with all the changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we should be used to weird, right?

Yes, but this is 2021.

The 1 p.m. Sunday, heat-of-the day games in the NFL are meant for the regular season. They are the staple of the regular season, in fact, and have been for a long time. No one blinks an eye when they see a 1 p.m. Sunday kickoff when they start playing the games that count in the standings.

But we can’t fret too much about a preseason game being played on Sunday afternoon. It’s just good to have football back — at any point of the season — with a stadium-full of fans again.

OK, those truly big crowds might not happen anywhere in the league until the regular season — it’s something that’s been the case for a while as the appeal of the preseason wanes and wanes — so we’ll take what we get on Sunday in Cleveland in the lone home preseason game of the year, and be happy — and hot — with it.