CBS just made a lot of Eagles fans across Pennsylvania happy

A lot of long-suffering Eagles fans in Pennsylvania are getting a reprieve on Sunday.

Instead of being forced to watch either the Baltimore Ravens or the Pittsburgh Steelers play, Birds fans in central Pennsylvania will be able to watch the Eagles take on the Jacksonville Jaguars at 1 p.m. on WHP-TV CBS 21, the local CBS affiliate based in Harrisburg that stretches across the Susquehanna Valley.

Normally, Eagles games are broadcast on Fox. So why is Sunday’s game airing on CBS?

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Under the current NFL TV deal, CBS gets the rights to air games when an AFC team visits an NFC team, which is the case with the Jaguars traveling to Philadelphia to play the Eagles.

CBS21 is the only CBS affiliate in most of central Pennsylvania, and usually the NFL requires the station to air Ravens games when Baltimore is either on the road or sold out at home.

Sunday, the Ravens play at home against the Buffalo Bills at 1 p.m. But CBS21 general manager Bill Bradley said CBS decided to go with Eagles-Jaguars due to the Birds’ strong start and because it will be former head coach Doug Pederson’s first time back in Philadelphia since being fired following the 2020 season.

In and around Philadelphia, Eagles-Jaguars will air on CBS3, with Spero Dedes and Jay Feely calling the game. Comcast Marietta and Blue Ridge Cable 11 in Lancaster County carry both CBS21 and CBS3, so the game will be hard to miss for Eagles fans there.

Bradley said it’s impossible to please the region’s sports fans every week. For instance, the Steelers are also playing on CBS at 1 p.m. on Sunday against the New York Jets. CBS21 broadcasts across the Susquehanna Valley, which is filled with Eagles, Ravens, and Steelers fans, and can only carry one of those three games Sunday.

“Am I expecting complaints? Who knows,” Bradley said. “People called last week complaining that we weren’t carrying the Ravens game, and it was on Fox.”

The good news for Eagles fans in central Pennsylvania is CBS21 is scheduled to carry the other two Birds games that will air on CBS this season — Week 8 at home against the Steelers on Oct. 30, and Week 11 at the Indianapolis Colts on Nov. 20.

Here’s a complete list of the NFL games the CBS affiliates in Pennsylvania are scheduled to air on Sunday at 1 p.m.:

Following the Green Bay Packers’ 14-12 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday, social media went into overdrive after Aaron Rodgers suggested he saw something on the Jumbotron that impacted how the game ended.

“Sometimes you see things in the game. Sometimes the Jumbotron shows things they probably shouldn’t show, even at home,” Rodgers told Fox Sports’ Tom Rinaldi after the game. “I saw something and just passed on the information.”

Of course, Rinaldi could’ve cleared things up if he had asked the obvious follow-up question: “What did you see?” Instead, rampant Twitter chatter was picked up by major news outlets speculating what Rodgers saw ahead of the Buccaneers’ failed two-point conversion attempt (one theory was Rodgers saw Tom Brady’s Surface tablet, which showed the final play).

Even Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles got involved, telling reporters he planned to meet with the team’s football operations department to determine what information Rogers might have swiped from the Jumbotron, according to Tampa Bay Times reporter Rick Stroud.

So what exactly did Rodgers see?

During his weekly appearance on The Pac McAfee Show, Rodgers explained that during the Buccaneers’ final drive, he walked down on the sideline to Packers head coach Matt LaFleur to discuss how to use their remaining timeout. That’s when he noticed the image on the screen.

“About four plays before ... well before the two-point conversion, I did see something on the Jumbotron that I went down and relayed to Matt,” Rodgers said. “I’m not going to get into exactly what I saw, or if it even had any real impact on the play. I think that’s kind of inconsequential.”

“Either way, it had nothing to do with the two-point conversion. There was not an image of the Microsoft Surface or anything,” Rodgers added. “That would’ve been pretty funny, though.”

Watch:

MLB is denying it received pressure from ESPN to extend a rain delay during Sundays New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox game so they would have a chance to air Aaron Judge’s 61st home run.

The Star-Ledger’s Brendan Kuty reported that ESPN “pressured” MLB officials to push its rain delay past 90 minutes because Judge would have been next up to bat when play resumed. Kuty also reported that it was only Yankees’ coach Aaron Boone’s threat to bench Judge that caused ESPN and MLB to back off and end the game after the 1-hour-38-minute delay.

But MLB issued a particularly strong statement pushing back hard on the story, calling it “simply not true.”

“MLB followed all of its usual processes at this point of the season in monitoring the weather, the playability of the field and the window to complete the game,” the league said in the statement. “There was no other influence outside of that context prior to MLB’s decision, and the suggestion otherwise is simply not true.”

ESPN didn’t issue a statement, but a spokesperson told The Inquirer the story was untrue, pointing out the game was going up against Sunday Night Football on NBC and the longer the rain delay went, the more viewers they would lose.

Longtime ESPN reporter Buster Onley wrote on Twitter that the story was “simply not true.”

Judge went 0 for 1 with four walks in the Yankees’ win over the Toronto Blue Jays on Tuesday night, which clinched the American League East for the Bronx Bombers.

Judge will try again to hit his 61st home run — and tie Roger Maris’ American League record set in 1961 — on Wednesday against the Blue Jays at 7:07 p.m. Barry Bonds holds the all-time record for the number of home runs in a season with 73, set in 2001.

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