Thursday, Aug 02nd 8:00 PM ET...……………….................Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium TV - NBC The NFL preseason is already in sight. The Baltimore Ravens and Chicago Bears will face off on Aug. 2 in the Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio, the NFL announced Tuesday. The Ravens will be making their first appearance in the Hall of Fame Game in franchise history, while the Bears will be making their fifth. Bears coach Matt Nagy, who was hired as John Fox's replacement in January, will be making his preseason debut in the contest.
I put money on viewership of the inductions going down. After watching the first preseason game most will have been gratified enough to do something different on Saturday.
Football is back. Sort of. The regular season doesn’t begin for five more weeks. But the preseason launches tonight, with the first of 65 exhibition games coming in Canton, as the Ravens face the Bears. Coverage begins at 8:00 p.m. ET on NBC. (It’s a minor fact that helped tip the scales in favor of me choosing to write this specific post.) The Hall of Fame game moved from Sunday to Thursday after a paint-drying debacle forced the 2016 game to be scrapped. So instead of converting the field from its configuration for the enshrinement ceremony on Saturday to football-ready on Sunday, they now play the game on Thursday, two days before bringing out the bronze busts. The best part about tonight’s game is that we’ll all get an initial chance to see where Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson might land on the bronze-bust-to-draft-bust scale. And maybe, just maybe, the Ravens will break out their much-discussed two-quarterback offense, at least for one play. You’ll see every play on NBC tonight, as we begin the real countdown toward the launch of the new football season. And, as we have for nearly 17 years, will be here for you every step of the way.
