After another dreadful Thursday night game, I am puzzled why a solution has not come up yet. Maybe I am no Werner Heisenberg for all you Quantum folks, but I do have a solution other then getting rid of the game. Why not have the teams that have a bye play the following Thursday? To me it is so obvious! The question then becomes the early Thursday games between weeks 2 to week 5. Any ideas? Also teams that play Monday night could also get a bye followed by a Thursday game. This was you don't crappy games due to tired and over unprepared players.
The NFL usually only uses bye weeks from ~wks 4 to 11. That's not enough to give every team a pre-TNF bye. Option 1: party bye week like it's 1999 when there was an odd number of teams. Probably wouldn't have to resort to a week 1/15 bye because of the Kickoff game and the multiple games on Thanksgiving, but still, I'm not sure if a super early/late bye before TNF in exchange for 14/15 straight weeks of play is much of an improvement. Option 2: put two games on every Thursday. At least one of those games would probably get terrible ratings though, and since the entire point of this is money, that's a non-starter. Option 3: do fewer Thursday games. Half the problem is their insistence that every team play on TNF once, but it's not like we really need to see the Jags or the Browns (and I'm guessing it's not a coinicence that the CBS/NBC schedules conveniently skip most of the crappiest teams). But again, money, so that's not happening. Of course we all know that if left up to the league, they'll take option 4: do nothing, because fuck the players, fuck the fans, gimme that sweet CBS/NBC cash. I honestly wonder why the union ever agreed to TNF in the first place. Or did they not have a choice?
I was thinking something similar. There would be the issue with early season games, as you mention, but the players hate playing on Thursday after a Sunday game. It's an insult to them to ignore that sentiment. Plus, the games are often underwhelming. Wanting to make a profit is one thing, but squeezing every last dollar out is another.
Thursday night football is gay. It's cool for the season opening day and thanksgiving. Other than that they can shove it up their asses. Sunday used to be special. They're watering down the product every way they possibly can. That goes for Sunday morning football in London too. The NFL continues to water down the product and wonders why the ratings are dropping.
Does anyone even consider watching the Thursday game if the Jets (or whatever team you are a fan of) are not playing?
I'll watch a good matchup no matter what day of the week, even figuring in the 'suspect TNF quality' discount.
Spot on. When there's a London game you can watch football from 9:30 AM-11ish PM on Sunday after watching a game Thursday, college football on Saturday (irrelevant to the league I know) and a game on Monday night. The product on Thursday's is so subpar that even closely contested games are littered with penalties, reviews, blown coverages, poor officiating, etc. So terrible. And this goon known as Roger Goodell's Dream is to put football on every day despite the CTE and concussion and long term injury problems. They need to refocus the league on creating a great product. Not on expanding from $4 billion in revenue to $10 billion or whatever it is that they make.
Ok my solution has an issue with weeks other than 4 to 11 for Thursday Night Football. Is there a possible workaround?
either give teams a bye week before the thursday game so it doesn't suck or just do the better thing and get rid of it
The solution is no more Thursday night games, with the exception of the opening weekend and Thanksgiving.
As I said on another thread I think either scrap it or give teams another bye week before it. I think it'd be great for everyone. The players would get an extra week of recuperation during the year, the NFL would get an extra week to sell the game, and the fans would have one less week of no football in the year.
