Packers vs. Washington 2016: Start time, TV schedule for ‘Sunday Night Football’

With their playoff hopes fading fast, the Green Bay Packers need a win when they face Washington on Sunday Night Football. If not for Aaron Rodgers and his team, then for head coach Mike McCarthy.

McCarthy has inched closer and closer to the hot seat this season after helming a team with the fourth-best Super Bowl odds and guiding them to a 4-5 start. Despite a track record that includes an NFL championship in 2010 and seven straight playoff appearances, the Packers may be looking to trade in a coach who has underwhelmed in 2015 and 2016.

Rallying to the playoffs is still possible, thanks in part to an unsettled NFC North. Last week, the Detroit Lions took over first place in the division due to Minnesota’s freefall from 5-0 to 5-4. Green Bay is only a game behind and has a head-to-head win over Detroit on its ledger, but will need a win on Sunday to keep pace. The Lions face the Jacksonville Jaguars this weekend and are a 6.5-point favorite.

That means the Packer secondary will have to be better. Green Bay made Marcus Mariota look like an in-his-prime Payton Manning, throwing for 295 yards and four touchdowns. Unfortunately for the Pack, this has become a common theme for recent quarterbacks. In the three-game losing streak, no team in the nation has given up more points than the team’s 37 per game.

While Rodgers has been playing better after an early-season slump, it hasn’t mattered. The Green Bay offense has scored 83 points the last three weeks and has zero wins to show for it.

Washington hopes to be the next team to benefit from a Green Bay secondary with more open air space than Dulles Airport. Kirk Cousins has rebounded from a mediocre start to put together a solid season, throwing for 1,021 yards and five touchdowns with only one interception in his past three games. That competence has his team on a 5-1-1 run after starting the season 0-2.

Washington’s run is even more impressive when you look at the teams it’s beaten along the way. Four of the franchise’s five wins in 2016 came against squads with winning records — the New York Giants, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Minnesota. While Washington hasn’t won a playoff game since 2005, its resume this fall provides plenty of evidence that this is the season the streak ends.

Cousins will have to lead his team to the postseason by navigating through a tough NFC and an even tougher NFC East. The East is the only division in the league where all four teams have winning records. A loss on Sunday night will likely drop Washington out of the wild card spot it currently holds and into the wash of near-.500 teams clawing for the conference’s final two playoff berths.

One of those teams looking to climb up off the back of an opponent is Green Bay, which currently stands in danger of leaving Wisconsinites with nothing to do when the NFL playoffs roll around for the first time since 2008.

Time: 8:30 p.m. ET

Place: FedEx Field, Landover, Md.

TV: NBC

Announcers: Mike Tirico, Cris Collinsworth, Michele Tafoya

Online: NBC Sports