Indeed.
The opposite of that happened two Sundays ago when the Browns visited the Chargers. Austin Ekeler just stopped running, but remained upright at about the two yard line. The Browns defenders escorted him into the end zone.
my thought would be to nix the Thursday games until week 6 or so.
TNF games don’t have to start so early in the season - they didn’t used to. But even if they do have to, then you can start at least putting teams on bye during the weeks where byes happen. That’s better than doing nothing.
That reduces flexibility to get the matchups they want, I realize, but having 3 days of recovery after a football game is just brutal and probably impacts the quality of those TNF games.
And a London trip right before the bye if you’re going to London.
London => Bye => TNF
They do, because the NFL wants more money.
No doubt. Less time for the players to recover, and less time for the coaches to install a game plan. Compared to Sunday games, TNF likely gives an outsized advantage to teams that are well-coached and healthy.
That’s an excellent idea. This season, byes started in Week 6 and will continue through Week 14.
But, as @AlsoNamedBort stated, it is all about the money.
At least for the first TNF game this season, it was Washington vs NY Giants, divisional foes who know each other.
But, I’ve never liked Thursday night games, definitely screws up fantasy and pick ‘em for me
Wouldn’t that mean the same matchup in London and the next Thursday?
It would. It’d work if the two games were in the same division, but the NFL usually tries to not schedule teams to play each other in back-to-back games (even with a bye week in between).
Well, shoot. That wouldn’t work.
This is a nice example of a fan POV of how to minimize the hurt to my team versus the schedule maker POV of how to make it fair for everyone.
Like, if just the Giants were always assured London then bye then Thursday, I would be fully satisfied. heh. (Plus of course the London game would always be an away game for the Giants.)
Does everyone in the league get a Thursday game? And what are we up to now, like half the league doing a London game this year?
Every team gets some sort of primetime game, but not guaranteed a Thursday game. But Thursday games are often given to teams that are generally bad/unpopular who would not merit a Sunday/Monday night game in order to give them a primetime game.
Actually, MNF could help:
Home London => Bye => TNF
Away London => MNF => Bye => TNF
Just two games, actually; it just happens to be on consecutive weekends.
This page on NFL.com indicates that 28 games (counting these two, I think) have been played in London. The Packers are the only team in the league to not yet have played a regular-season game outside the U.S., though as part of the new 17-game schedule, there is an agreement that each team will play at least one international game every eight years, so the Pack will be playing in London (or Mexico, or somewhere) before the decade is out.
Well for just a handful of games my revised schedule above could actually work.
In other news, I saw a commercial yesterday for the Manning brothers’ MNF commentary show on ESPN2 returning this week.
2 blocked FGs in WFT-Packers game, one apiece, mid-2nd quarter.
An absolute bonehead play by Taylor Heinicke, he was ruled to be giving himself up just short of the goal line and cost Washington a TD.
I was quite wrong about how good the Bengals would be this year, this is all quite a surprise. Beating Baltimore would make them scary. I would say the AFC North and NFC West are far ahead of all other divisions in strength but I think the edge goes to the North.
How is Kansas City so bad this year? I thought they had a shot at going undefeated.
Mahomes getting carried off the field but it doesn’t look that bad.
Incidentally apparently only 3 members of the Browns starting offense were playing the game on Thursday without significant injury. Even though Denver isn’t great, that’s actually a pretty impressive victory on a short week with the most injured team in the NFL.
It seems like it’s always Jacksonville. Maybe there’s been some years where they don’t play in London, but it seems to me like they get the short straw every year. Maybe Londoners are Jags fans for some reason?