What­ev­er it took, the NFL kept play­ing this sea­son, deter­mined to get through its sched­ule amid the coro­n­avirus pandemic.

Mak­ing the Bron­cos play a game with­out a quar­ter­back. Check.

Play­ing a game on Wednes­day after­noon. Check.

Con­stant­ly adjust­ing the sched­ule. Check.

Now, with a week left in the reg­u­lar sea­son, it appears the NFL will achieve its objec­tive, a full reg­u­lar sea­son, no mat­ter the obsta­cles. In the NFL, the show must go on, right or wrong, as it has through­out his­to­ry, dur­ing the Great Depres­sion, World War II, the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, 9–11, Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na, and now a world­wide pandemic.

The sea­son was large­ly a TV show, with a major­i­ty of games held with­out fans, but also one that still drew mil­lions of eye­balls every Sun­day — and some­times even on a Tuesday.

“For those three hours, or if peo­ple watch a cou­ple of games (on a Sun­day), it does help because life does feel nor­mal,” Bron­cos coach Vic Fan­gio said. “But by no means does it wipe out the seri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion and the predica­ment we’re in with this virus.”

Hav­ing that escape every week can mean more now than ever, said Cindy Car­ney, a long­time sea­son-tick­et hold­er, and nurse at Porter Hos­pice Res­cue. She sees it up close with her patients.

“In this world right now, with the racial and polit­i­cal divi­sion and, of course, the pan­dem­ic, the Bron­cos can be a place to find union,” Car­ney said. “I see that hap­pen through the grief of (my patients) every day and every Sun­day because that gets them through the week. That game still brings them togeth­er with oth­er people.

“Peo­ple take more out of the com­mu­ni­ty that comes with cheer­ing for the team than the win­ning and the los­ing, espe­cial­ly at a time like this.”

The finan­cial hit deliv­ered by the pan­dem­ic has been sub­stan­tial to the league but has caused less dev­as­ta­tion rel­a­tive to oth­er pro­fes­sion­al sports due to the NFL’s enor­mous TV con­tracts, and deter­mi­na­tion to play every game. A year ago, each of the 32 NFL teams pock­et­ed a record $296 mil­lion in nation­al rev­enue, most of it from TV deals. (Green Bay, the only fran­chise required to divulge its finances as the league’s only pub­licly owned team, also gen­er­at­ed $210.9 mil­lion in local revenues).

Not hav­ing fans in the stands has a cost, espe­cial­ly for teams with a devot­ed fan base like the Bron­cos, who boast a league record 415-game sell­out streak. Not hav­ing the gate receipts like­ly means the 2021 salary cap will stay flat or decrease from the 2020 cap of $198.2 mil­lion, which would be a first since the cap was insti­tut­ed in 1994. In turn, that will like­ly result in more teams tak­ing a more con­ser­v­a­tive approach to sign­ing free agents.

The NFL will take an esti­mat­ed $2.8 bil­lion loss in game-day rev­enues this year, accord­ing to the 2020 NFL Fan Cost Index.

“Obvi­ous­ly with­out fans in the stands, revenue’s going to come down,” explains Ade­wale Ogunl­eye, a for­mer NFL play­er and the head of sports and enter­tain­ment at UBS. “And once the num­bers come out, I’m sure jer­sey sales and all this oth­er (mer­chan­dise) has prob­a­bly gone down. What all that’s going to effect going for­ward is future (col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments), and the mon­ey that teams are going to have under the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agreement.”

So, while there will be some fis­cal tight­en­ing, nei­ther the NFL nor the Bron­cos are in dire finan­cial straits. But, mon­e­tary ram­i­fi­ca­tions are going to start to be more clear­ly seen — and felt — dur­ing the offseason. 

“You’re going to see big deals — you’re going to have to pay peo­ple — but you’re going to see a tight­en­ing of the wal­let in oth­er places that you haven’t before,” Ogunl­eye said. “You’ll start to see some of the sec­ond- and third-tier play­ers not get these big deals, just because the (major­i­ty) of the mon­ey will have to go to the stars, so the sec­ond- and third-tier play­ers will maybe see a stag­na­tion of salaries going up.”

As for the NFL’s TV rat­ings, they have mod­er­ate­ly declined over­all this sea­son. But Tag Gar­son, senior vice pres­i­dent of the Wasser­man Media Group, a top sports mar­ket­ing firm, doesn’t believe the league has rea­son to wor­ry long-term.

“It still is the most pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion sport in this coun­try by far,” Gar­son said. “And its rat­ings are con­sis­tent­ly some of the high­est rat­ings on tele­vi­sion as a whole when you also con­sid­er enter­tain­ment programming.

“So while rat­ings may be down, we have to keep every­thing in con­text… We’ve been deal­ing with a pan­dem­ic, we’ve been engaged in an elec­tion for the pres­i­den­cy, and you’ve also had to play some games when you gen­er­al­ly wouldn’t be play­ing them. There are a lot of fac­tors that go into a rat­ings dip, that cer­tain­ly may not be a fac­tor next sea­son, espe­cial­ly if we can assume the coun­try will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly vac­ci­nat­ed by the sum­mer of next year and fans can come back and sell out stadiums.”

Car­ney wel­comes that, and offers per­haps the best per­spec­tive on her beloved Bron­cos, who have dis­ap­point­ed her with a fourth con­sec­u­tive los­ing sea­son, but pro­vide much more than wins and loss­es. (She is, though, still irri­tat­ed the NFL left the Bron­cos no option but to play a wide receiv­er at quar­ter­back ear­li­er this sea­son due to their COVID-19 violations).

“Minus the no quar­ter­back thing — which real­ly makes me mad by the way — get­ting to have a sea­son dur­ing the pan­dem­ic takes the love of foot­ball to anoth­er lev­el. There’s no get­ting irri­tat­ed at one play.”