Eagles Vs. Vikings: NFL Postpones Game To Tuesday Due To Philadelphia Weather

The NFL has released an official statement on the postponement of tonight’s scheduled Eagles-Vikings game to Tuesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern. From NFL spokesman Greg Aiello on Twitter:

Due to public safety concerns in light of today’s snow emergency in Philadelphia, tonight’s Vikings-Eagles game has been postponed. Because of the uncertainty of the extent of tonight’s storm + its aftermath, the game will be played on Tues night at 8 pm This will allow sufficient time to ensure that roads, parking lots and the stadium are fully cleared. National Weather Service states that a winter storm warning in Phila remains in effect until 1 pm Mon. NBC will (televise) game nationally.That certainly sounds like a decision made mostly for the purposes of safety, but it’s telling that the statement notes that the winter storm warning for Philadelphia will not last into Monday night, and that NBC will be able to televise the game nationally.

And now we know that the NFL will be postponing today’s Eagles-Vikings game.

Philadelphia-based NFL writer Adam Caplan of FOX Sports tweets that the Eagles have said the game is postponed until Tuesday night.

So why, exactly, is the NFL discussing possibly postponing the Eagles-Vikings game scheduled for Sunday night on NBC? In a word: snow.

Weather all over the eastern seaboard is going to be a bit crazy today, but Philadelphia weather might be smack in the center of a blizzard. Here’s the forecast for today’s weather at the Philadelphia airport, via flightstats.com:

Pro Football Talk reports that the league is mulling whether or not to play tonight in Philadelphia, keying on NFL spokesman Greg Aiello’s tweet saying the league is “discussing (the) situation.”

There are a host of problems with this prospect, and ones that may make moving the third consecutive Vikings game due to weather conditions harder than it was to move the first two. The first and foremost problem is that NBC’s rights to tonight’s game mean that the game would almost certainly be broadcast on network television if moved to Monday night, which would eat into ESPN’s dominance of television with the “Monday Night Football” franchise.