Thursday Night Football: Players Don't Like It, NFL Fans Are Still Watching

Scroll through Twitter during “Thursday Night Football” and it won’t be hard to find the complaints. No, not about the national anthem or protests—though there’s certain to be some of those — about the game itself.

“Thursday Night Football” has become synonymous with bad football. Because it’s in primetime, it’s on display for the entire nation to see.

The NFL moved to a full season of Thursday night games in 2012. Adding an extra day of the country's most popular sport seemed like a no-brainer, and it’s a decision that millions of fans have embraced.

The difference between the football played on Thursday and Sunday, however, would be hard to ignore. With just four days off instead of their regular seven, NFL players aren’t nearly as sharp, leading to sloppy and noncompetitive games.

“You’re talking about teams coming off what? A three, four-day rest,” retired NFL star Vince Wilfork told International Business Times. “And, to me, it’s a big liability because, you talk injuries, injuries and keeping these players safe. Well, here you are, Sunday, and now you’re playing again Thursday, you’re going to get a sloppy game. Nobody’s body is back at 100 percent. You got people still hurting from the game.

“I don’t like it. I don’t agree with it. But that’s the NFL. That’s what we signed up for. But I disagree with it. I definitely do.”

During the 2016 season, nine of the 15 Thursday night games featured a margin of victory of more than 10 points. Only five of the 17 games on “Sunday Night Football” saw a team win by more than 10 points.

Things haven’t gotten much better in 2017.

The first game with teams playing on short rest saw the Houston Texans and Cincinnati Bengals combine to score just 22 points and one touchdown with neither team reaching 300 yards of offense. A week later on full rest, the Bengals and Texans scored 24 points and 33 points, respectively.

In Week 4, the Green Bay Packers blew out the Chicago Bears 35-14 in a game that was essentially over at halftime. The Bears had four turnovers in the loss. (When the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers played to a 41-39 thriller in Week 3, NFL fans were stunned at how competitive the game was, which still featured four turnovers.)

Wilfork was an NFL defensive tackle for 13 seasons, announcing his retirement in the summer after spending 2016 with the Texans. He was on the wrong side of a Thursday night blowout last year when the Texans lost to the Patriots 27-0.

It was in that same game in which three-time Defensive Player of the Year J.J. Watt reinjured his back and was put on the shelf for the rest of the season. Perhaps Watt would have still gotten hurt if the game took place on a Sunday, but it’s a question Seattle Seahawks Pro Bowl cornerback Richard Sherman pondered. He wrote an article entitled “Why I Hate Thursday Night Football,” for The Players’ Tribune last December.

Sherman made it clear that he wants the NFL to do away with “Thursday Night Football,” calling it a “poopfest,” “terrible,” “ludicrous” and “hypocritical,” among other things.

“The NFL preaches player safety. The league says it wants to do everything in its power to protect its players. But when it comes down to it, it’s not the players that the NFL protects,” Sherman wrote.

“It’s the Shield.”

The poor quality of play was so noticeable last year that it appeared the NFL might actually eliminate “Thursday Night Football.” Pro Football Talk reported that the league was considering the “possibility of ending, or at least limiting,” Thursday night games.

That prompted a quick response by the league in which they denied speculation that players like Wilfork or Sherman might get their wish. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell went a step further in January, telling FOX Sports Radio’s Colin Cowherd that penalties, turnovers and player safety aren’t an issue on Thursday nights.

“Almost by every barometer, the quality of the game is better on Thursday night,” Goodell said.

“On safety, and we’ve been tracking this every year, there has not been any, any indication or facts or anything else that would indicate the level of injuries are up on Thursday night.”

It’s possible the idea that short rest breeds noncompetitive games is overblown. Just look at last year’s “Monday Night Football” schedule. Even with both teams having an extra day of rest, only five of the 17 games produced margins of victory in single digits.

Every Sunday night game in 2017 has been decided by double-digits. In Week 4, the Seattle Seahawks beat the Indianapolis Colts by 28 points.

Whether or not the quality of play is much worse on Thursdays, fans are still watching in large numbers. Despite the complaints, ratings for “Thursday Night Football” remain strong compared to whatever else is on TV.

The Thursday night games in Week 2 and Week 3 saw improved ratings from a season ago. The Week 4 contest between the Packers and Bears had a five percent decrease in ratings from 2016, though it did so in spite of a 47-minute weather delay. A total of 14.6 million viewers watched the game.

Airing on both the NFL Network and CBS, the last Thursday night game led the ratings for both cable and broadcast television. The Week 5 contest between the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers should finish first, as well, easily outperforming the MLB playoff game between the New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians that will be ongoing at the same time.

The players might not like it, but “Thursday Night Football” probably isn’t going away anytime soon.