Why are there two Monday Night Football games tonight? Here's the reason, and how to watch
The NFL season continues tonight as Week 3 concludes with two Monday Night Football divisional matchups.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers host the Philadelphia Eagles at 7:15 p.m. on ABC (and streaming on the ESPN+ app). An hour later, the Cincinnati Bengals host the Los Angeles Rams in a rematch of Super Bowl LVI on ESPN and ESPN2. New York radio personality Boomer Esiason will be inducted into the Bengals' Ring of Honor at halftime.
Why are there two Monday Night Football games?
This is the second week in a row that there is a Monday Night Football doubleheader. It will happen for a third time this season on Dec. 11 when Packers-Giants and Titans-Dolphins both kick off at 8:15 p.m.
Since 2006, there was always a Monday Night Football doubleheader in Week 1 with the first game starting at 7 p.m. and the second contest beginning at 10 p.m.
However, the NFL changed that in 2022.
Last season in Week 2, ESPN decided to have the Tennessee Titans vs. Buffalo Bills in the 7:15 p.m. slot, and kickoff between the Philadelphia Eagles vs. Minnesota Vikings one hour later at 8:15 p.m.
A main reason for this was ABC wanted to show off its new broadcast booth in former FOX announcers in Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, who left the former for Monday Night Football leading up to the 2022 season.
The network decided to give the commentary pair a solo game in Week 1 (Seattle Seahawks vs. Denver Broncos), opting to move the opening Monday Night doubleheader to Week 2, and thus changing the times for a staggered start instead of waiting for the first matchup to end.
In addition to the change, ABC will simulcast an additional 10 Monday Night Football games this season due to the continuation of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, according to Variety.
While fans may not enjoy switching back and forth between these games, it's a relief for us East Coast fans. The second game will most likely now end around 11:30 p.m. instead of in years past when the final game of the week wouldn't end until early Tuesday morning here.
Ratings were slightly up across the board this season for the NFL in Week 1, and when the Eagles defeated the Vikings 34-28 this past Thursday night, the game had an average of 15.05 million viewers on Amazon Prime & in teams' home markets, the largest audience by roughly two million viewers since Thursday Night Football moved to streaming on Prime Video.
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This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Monday Night Football doubleheader: Why two games today?
