Football's back! Well, sort of football. The Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony is a wrap, and now Sunday brings the 2016 Hall of Fame Game. The Hall enshrined their 2016 class on Saturday, including former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo. Now, the weekend wraps up with the traditional Hall of Fame Game. This year, it pits the Green Bay Packers against the Indianapolis Colts on ESPN at 5 p.m. PT. We'll get to start things off with new ESPN Monday Night Football announcer Sean McDonough, who will be joined by Jon Gruden and Lisa Salters.
The upside to the Hall of Fame Game is that we get to see some real football. Practice and training camp is great and all, but this is actual football on the field. At the same time, it is the first preseason game for two teams that only have a couple weeks of camp under their belt. Both teams will likely keep things fairly vanilla, and most starters that play will probably not get much more than a series or two of action.
This game features one great quarterback in Aaron Rodgers, and another quarterback in Andrew Luck who has the potential to be great, but is coming off an injury-plagued 2015 season in which inconsistency was also an issue. I don’t expect to see much of either quarterback in this game.
This game gets us a little bit closer to the San Francisco preseason opener. The team will take the field next Sunday against the Houston Texans. That means we are officially entering a "game week" tomorrow!
Date/time: Sunday, Aug. 9, 5 p.m. PT
Location: Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium, Canton, Ohio
TV: ESPN
Announcers: Sean McDonough, Jon Gruden, Lisa Salters
Online: WatchESPN