• This is the first season of what the NFL is calling double-doubleheader weeks, something the NFL is starting this year and carrying through the remainder of the new TV contracts signed earlier this year. Each year in Week 1 and Week 18, the league, instead of focusing on one network with a mega-game in the late doubleheader window, will put a big game on both FOX and CBS in the late window. This year, the schedule was set up this way next Sunday: Cleveland-Kansas City at 4:25 p.m. on CBS, and Green Bay-New Orleans at 4:25 p.m. on FOX. (CBS gets the added benefit of Steelers-Bills at 1 p.m. ET, which would be worthy of a prime-time slot itself.) The NFL needed Saints-Packers in that slot because the other FOX games that day (Seattle-Indy or Denver-Giants) wouldn’t have delivered near the audience that Packers/Aaron Rodgers/first Saints game post-Brees will deliver.
• A good doubleheader game might draw 24 million viewers (Green Bay-Indy last year, Week 11) or 23 million (Kansas City-New Orleans in Week 15). The NFL is hoping that two games with four fan bases with big TV followings can generate a total audience of 36-38 million viewers. Losing Green Bay-New Orleans would have scuttled that plan. So there was never any serious thought of postponing the game so it could be played in New Orleans later in the year.