The Bills Week 5 late game at San Francisco will now kick off later.
In a league wide initiative in conjunction with network partners CBS and FOX, all scheduled 4:15 pm late games will be moved back 10 minutes to a 4:25 pm kickoff time. The move is to reduce the instances in which fans miss the end of the 1 p.m. ET telecast because they receive the opening kickoff of their home team's late afternoon games.
"In researching the kickoff time shift, the NFL analyzed games from the 2009-11 seasons and found that 44 games required part of the audience to be switched to a mandatory doubleheader game kickoff," read the NFL release on the time changes. "With a 4:25 PM ET kickoff time, that number that would have been reduced by 66 percent to only 15 games."
Buffalo's Week 5 game at San Francisco is part of the contingent of 4:15 pm games that will now move to a 4:25 pm kickoff. Buffalo is an even 3-3 against the 49ers on the road, most recently posting a 41-7 win at Candlestick Park December 26, 2004.
