John Madden isn’t the only one who thinks Thursday night football is a bad idea.
“I think the NFL should just do away with Thursday night games,” former Raiders tackle Lincoln Kennedy said.
“It’s such a violent game. By Thursday, if you’re lucky, you’re just starting to feel like your body is not beat the hell up,” former 49ers center Jeremy Newberry said.
During an ESPN spot, analyst and former Raiders safety Charles Woodson opined that the league should ax the Thursday night schedule.
“You can’t guarantee a great Thursday night matchup and I just think it’s not good for the players,” Woodson said. “Time for Thursday night to go — with the exception of Thanksgiving. Get it out.”
The Raiders aren’t going out of their way to say it, but they’re less than thrilled with the idea of crossing two time zones on short rest to play the Kansas City Chiefs in their biggest game in more than a decade.
“In my career, if you played on a Thursday, you’re going to take some soreness into the game,” Raiders coach Jack Del Rio said. “The older guys for sure. Some of the younger guys even . . . tough set of circumstances. We don’t mind tough things. We’re looking forward to the challenge.”
Madden, a respected NFL consultant, was blunt in his assessment of the Thursday night product in a Thanksgiving week interview with the Bay Area News Group’s Cam Inman.
The Hall of Fame coach and Bay Area icon believes the market is saturated with too many games given the presence of games on Sunday night and Monday night and that it was too difficult to get quality games with an extra viewing window.
“Something has to be done about Thursday night football,” Madden said. “It just doesn’t work. It’s not only a fan thing, it’s a team thing. It’s a safety thing. It’s a competitive thing. It doesn’t work.”
According to NFL figures compiled from 2012 through 2015, there were actually fewer injuries reported per game on Thursday than on Sunday, with the biggest disparity in 2014, when there were 7.3 injuries per game on Sunday as opposed to 4.8 on Thursdays.
The Web site Profootballtalk.com, quoting an unnamed source, reported on Nov. 27 the NFL would take a look at “the possibility of ending, or at least limiting” the Thursday night schedule.
The report was followed the next day with a statement from an NFL spokesman: “We are fully committed to Thursday Night Football and any reports to the contrary are unfounded.”
As long as Thursday nights represent a chance to increase revenue, the games are likely going nowhere. Since 2012, games have begun in Week 2 and every team in the NFL will be scheduled for a Thursday night.
There were limited Thursday packages in previous years, plus long-standing traditional Thanksgiving Day games in Detroit and Dallas with a third game added annually since 2006.
Included in the Thursday partnership has been CBS, the NFL Network, and most recently, NBC. The NFL also started streaming Thursday night games on Twitter.
None of the agreements have been long-term.
Andrew Brandt, a former Green Bay executive and a sports business reporter for ESPN, thinks it would be a mistake to assume the NFL isn’t committed to Thursday nights.
“I would think they’re just waiting to set the market,” Brandt said. “It’s almost like they’ve been playing this cat and mouse game, waiting for a larger commitment next year and beyond. Maybe CBS or NBC will decide they want to go all-in on this.”
There have been a handful of dreadful Thursday night games — New England-Houston in Week 3, Cincinnati-Miami in Week 4, Arizona-49ers in Week 5 in particular.
The quality of play is compromised because players are at less than their peak.
Kennedy, an analyst for the Pac-12 Network and a Raiders sideline reporter for the flagship radio station, said, “You feel tired. You feel worn out. Your body is fatigued because it throws off your whole routine.”
In the latter part of his career, Newberry was limited in practice during the week and often didn’t practice at all because it took his body that long to recover.
“Even playing on a Monday night and having a game the next Sunday on a short week was difficult because you had one less day off,” Newberry said. “So to play on Sunday and then play again on Thursday? That’s tough. Real tough.”
One former player who didn’t mind playing on Thursdays was former Raiders linebacker Kirk Morrison, who thought the benefit of the extra rest following the game outweighed the short rest preceding it.
“Never ask a player during the week if they like playing on Thursday,” Morrison said. “Ask them on Friday if they like having the weekend off. Every team has to do it, so it’s not like anyone is getting the short end of the stick.”
