Are You Ready For Some Pre-Sunset Thursday Football?!

The Hollywood Reporter (via Pro Football Talk) reports that the NFL will move up the kickoff of it's annual Thursday season opener from 8:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. so the game won't conflict with John McCain's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, scheduled for that evening around 10:00 p.m.. This is interesting for two reasons:
1) It shows that NBC still wants to give the appearance that they care about news, despite the fact that they'd much rather being showing a football game rather than a political acceptance speeches. Both political conventions get dismal ratings and draw no advertising revenue for the networks. And putting the game on earlier means less viewers on both coasts (particularly in the west), which means NBC has to charge less for commercials.
Of course NBC has to act like they'd rather broadcast McCain's speech, but deep down you know both them and the NFL are none too happy the Republican convention ends the same night their season begins. (FYI, John Kerry's acceptance speech at the DNC in '04 drew 4.1 million viewers on NBC. That year's NFL season opener drew 18.5 million viewers on ABC. It is worth noting, though, that 20.1 million total viewers watched Kerry's speech on various networks - CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc.)
2) In the six-year history of the Thursday season opener, the NFL has purposefully not scheduled any divisional matchups. Why? I haven't seen a good explanation for this, but I assume it's due to the league wanting more of a national audience for the game. (Some say it's because the NFL doesn't want the defending Super Bowl champion to have to play a division game right out of the gate, but plenty of teams do it every year - remember Dallas/New York debuted NBC's Sunday slate in 2007 - so why would the champs be different?)
The problem with the 2008 game is that the NFL really doesn't have any other option but to schedule a division game for the Giants. With the earlier start time, the presumptive "favorites" to play in the game, Seattle, are likely out. I can't imagine the NFL would want the Seahawks to kickoff their season with a 4:00 start on a Thursday afternoon out west. That eliminates the 49ers too; not that they would have been in the game in the first place. You can also throw out the Bengals (not the team Roger Goodell wants featured on opening night) and the Panthers (not the team anyone wants to watch on opening night) too. Baltimore might get a look, but their 5-11 record last season is too ugly to ignore. As is their quarterback situation.
That leaves only three home games: Dallas, Philadelphia and Washington. Dallas is the obvious choice; but I don't know if the league would "waste" that matchup on a game guaranteed to draw eyes anyway. They'd probably want to keep that for a Monday or Sunday night matchup; leaving the other game in the home-and-home to FOX. Beacuse of that, I think the Giants week one opponent will either be the Eagles or Redskins. I'd prefer the Eagles, mainly because maroon and black doesn't look too good under the lights.
Whoever the other team is, I hope the game goes to overtime so that NBC will be ridiculed for thinking that there wouldn't be any potential problem with hoping an NFL game with an extended halftime will fit nicely into a tight 3 hour, 15 minute timeslot. What are they going to do if the game goes to overtime; bump the NFL for McCain? It'd be like the Heidi incident all over again. Minus the Swiss, of course.