The Cleveland Browns and Las Vegas Raiders will play Monday late afternoon football in Cleveland. Their Saturday game was postponed to Monday due to health concerns related to a COVID-19 outbreak among the Browns team.
Cleveland’s roster has had over 20 players on their reserve/COVID-19 list much of the week and would have been heavily depleted for Saturday’s matchup. The league’s bigger concern was continued spread both among players and between teams.
Raiders linebacker K.J. Wright believes that the league only moved the game due to favoritism toward the Browns despite two other games also being moved.
The team’s owner is also not happy about the decision to move the game back two days citing competitive disadvantages for Las Vegas. Mark Davis even went as far as to suggest the game should be moved to the Raiders stadium in Nevada to make it fairer:
Just spoke with #Raiders owner Mark Davis on game being moved back to Monday: Heath and safety is No. 1, but it's a competitive disadvantage to the @Raiders. Maybe the #Browns should fly to Las Vegas. @ESPNNFL @espn @SportsCenter pic.twitter.com/OxZgyHK9XF
— Paul Gutierrez (@PGutierrezESPN) December 17, 2021
Outside of the logistics of making that extreme change, Davis also seems to believe the game was moved to help the Browns despite the league noting that the decision was made on medical advice and not for competitive reasons.
For the Raiders, their slim hopes of a playoff birth rest on winning the rest of their games and having teams ahead of them, including Cleveland, lose many of their games. That, along with the shortened time between games from Week 15 and 16, seems to be the reason for such angst from Las Vegas over the postponement.
The Browns, for what it is worth, will also have the disadvantage of a quick turnaround with their road game against the Green Bay Packers on Saturday, Christmas Day.