Los Angeles Rams running back Todd Gurley preached a message of wisdom when he described Thursday Night Football with three words:
”…Dumbest thing ever.”
Awaiting the Rams is a brutal October schedule that features a Week 5 Thursday Night road game against divisional rival Seattle Seahawks, a Week 6 affair against the 3-0 San Francisco 49ers, a Week 7 road matchup against an opponent more than 2,000 miles away, and a Week 8 trip played at a stadium approximately 5,500 miles away.
Jet lag and frequent flyer miles. A league that preaches player safety constantly fails to demonstrate that when they’re forcing teams to accommodate ridiculous scheduling tactics. For the purpose of this editorial, we’ll focus on the Thursday Night Football offerings that present some of the most senseless player safety hazards in all of sports.
Few sports matters are more baffling than how the NFL has butchered its NFL Thursday Night Football offering. Donald Latumahina of Life Optimizer wrote a blog article titled, “The Silent Danger of Greed.” Latumahina suggests that victims of greed convince themselves that nothing could go wrong. Everyone else is doing it. He reasons:
“The problem is people usually aren’t aware of the coming danger until everything is too late. Greed blinds them.”
Good advice for NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the owners. They want to create interest in midweek football. The problems revolve around the dangers. The frustrating part is that those dangers are completely avoidable. Fans and players shouldn’t have had to see two players getting stretchered off during a Week 4 matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers. Those players were Packers running back Jamaal Williams and Eagles cornerback Avonte Maddox.
Thursday Night Football is borderline unwatchable.
Coaching staffs don’t have adequate time to evaluate opponents. The players haven’t fully recovered from four days prior. Games are played either with starters at less than 100 percent or reserves. Even the officials appear exhausted and unfocused. These are prime-time games that should showcase the NFL’s best product. That rarely happens. We get poorly officiated contests with sluggish players who are exposed to safety concerns.
Consider the first few Thursday Night Football matchups of the 2019-20 NFL season. We’ll exclude the NFL Kickoff Game because each team had the entire offseason to prepare. Week 2 featured an injured Cam Newton who was forced to completely alter his game for the worse. As of this writing, the injury has cost him Week 3 and 4. Week 3 featured a Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars matchup that was so bad that even New England Patriots six-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Tom Brady tweeted his disapproval:
Up next was a Week 4 showdown featuring the Packers and Eagles. Both teams witnessed one of their own players get stretched off. The Eagles found themselves at an even bigger disadvantage because starting cornerback Ronald Darby and starting wide receiver DeSean Jackson were unable to play on short rest. An injury kept Packers wide receiver Davante Adams from finishing the game. Both teams limped to the finish line.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Thursday Night Football has become little more than a display for what happens when football players are expected to enter the modern era Gladiator Colosseum on short rest. It’s bad enough that the NFL allows one bye week over 17 weeks. Think of teams with Week 4 byes. They’ll play Week 5-17 without a rest week. That’s 13 straight games. If they’re a wildcard team vying for a Super Bowl berth, then add another three. That’s 16 straight games. That’s a full season without a recovery period.
Critics like to defend Thursday Night Football with injury report analysis. They’ve painted a picture that players aren’t at increased injury risk. Obviously, simple analysis of dishonest injury reports and small sample sizes aren’t nearly enough to discredit those who are involved in the games. Future Hall of Fame cornerback Richard Sherman suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon that prematurely ended his 2017-18 season. The irony was that, just a year earlier, Sherman blasted the NFL for requiring players to play on short rest.
Human bodies get accustomed to a routine. NFL players get used to the routine of playing football every six to seven days. Then the NFL suddenly wants them to halve that. Football is hard enough as is with regular rest. Why put them through that kind of shock?
I don’t play football. Never have. The most I can liken this to is working out. Years ago, I was a novice who was given two weeks to tryout a CrossFit gym. My previous workout routines included a typical weekly squatting and deadlifting session. Suddenly I was squatting on Monday, squatting on Tuesday, deadlifting on Wednesday, squatting Thursday…you get the picture. All of this via a timer. Speed deadlifting and speed squatting are probably the true “Dumbest things ever.” We’ll leave that for another day.
Those sudden changes wreaked havoc on my immune system and knees. An adjustment period was necessary. Now imagine how NFL players feel when they’re rushed into far more dangerous situations while their bodies aren’t prepared for optimal performance. Those muscles and ligaments that haven’t fully recovered are ready to snap, crackle, and pop.
Isn’t the least the NFL can do is allow players enough time to recover? We’re talking about a sport where research has concluded that an average game features the same impact as 62 car crashes. Approximately 15 percent of those crashes had the same impact as a car crashing into a wall at 30mph. Other data suggests that the impact is similar to 50 boxer punches to the head.
Everybody loves to use Antonio Brown as the symbol of almost every negative label imaginable. In the future, Brown may become the symbol for what happens when concussion symptoms take a turn for the worst. In 2016, Popular Science wrote an article emphasizing the overall impact that concussions can have on one’s life. The impact can last long after football. This article focused on the Vontaze Burfict hit that concussed Brown. That head-shot was registered around 707 mph. Dr. Robert Cantu—a co-director at Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center and a clinical professor of neurosurgery at the university’s School of Medicine—foreshadowed the emotional distress and depression that has engulfed Brown. Remember Chris Benoit and the CTE that resulted in him having the brain of an 85-year-old with dementia?
Brown’s emotional outbursts aren’t a joke. The NFL must take this matter seriously. Don’t keep pouring gas on the flames. Help him.
Hoards of evidence exists that display the dangers of football. Professional football multiplies those risks because the collisions involve the world’s biggest and fastest athletes. Maybe the NFL should respond a little differently than requiring players to learn how to recover after three/four days as opposed to the typical six/seven (amount depends on how one defines a rest day)? Or are the short-term gains too fancy and more important than the eventual publicity nightmare that awaits them? The endangering of human livelihoods?
Stop and think about the absurdity of Thursday Night Football. The NBA has focused on expanding its schedule to allow for more rest days. Teams have increasingly promoted load management principles. They’re punting five to 10 games per regular season. Those short-term losses are supposed to result in a long-term plan for keeping superstars fresh and healthy for a postseason run.
Following in those footsteps is MLB. There was a time when Cal Ripken Jr. played 2,632 straight games. During July 2018, former Kansas City Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar ended what was MLB’s then-leading 421 straight games played. Following him were Freddy Galvis (255) and Freddie Freeman (98). Third place was 98! We’re talking about a league where most players bat four times per game. They spend the rest of their time sitting in the dugout or standing around the field.
These are two North American professional sports leagues that compensate their stars quite handsomely. Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout just banked a $430 million contract. The higher the player salaries, the more these organizations become increasingly risk averse with allowing players to fight through injuries or simple fatigue. They can’t afford to pay outrageous salaries just to see them become the next Jacoby Ellsbury. The New York Yankees can afford that. Others would become financially crippled.
Neither the NBA nor MLB exposes its athletes to the amount of dangers that NFL does. While the NFL doesn’t offer guaranteed contracts, most star players get a sizable guarantee. An NFL franchise would feel significant impact if they lost a star player early in his contract. The Rams are experiencing this after they recently rewarded Gurley with a mega contract.
Other leagues have demonstrated risk-averseness toward their most marketable figures. Why does the NFL demand the exact opposite of its headliners? The NBA and MLB want more rest days. The NFL wants more games and less rest in-between them.
Stupid, NFL. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Use some common sense. It’s getting harder to justify supporting a league that promotes increasingly wicked, immoral, and greedy tactics that needlessly endanger their employees.
Thursday Night Football puts more than careers at risk—it risks lives. The NFL mustn’t keep this prime-time telecast in its current format. The easiest solution is to eliminate Thursday Night games. The problem is that the NFL won’t want to lose the money it gains from football fans who enjoy midweek football.
Here’s a much better alternative that would benefit everybody involved: add another bye week. Outkick the Coverage’s Clay Travis has discussed this idea. A 17-week schedule with one bye week becomes an 18-week schedule with two bye weeks. Giving each team an extra week to prepare for that midweek game would do wonders for the safety and quality of those prime-time matchups. Three days of preparation just became 10. Thursday Night Football becomes a better representation of professional football. The NFL creates a safer environment. Players benefit from increased recovery time. The NFL creates an entire week of broadcasts (Week 18) without requiring more games. Remove preseason games and add regular season games as needed.
Load management has become a component of leagues that are far less dangerous. Then there’s the NFL demanding that their living crash test dummies return to work on short rest. Even without fully guaranteed contracts, the owners invest a lot into their star players. They shouldn’t subject themselves to current conditions. One bad night can change the franchise. It can change a career. It can change a life.
Fix it. This isn’t a hard solution. This shouldn’t require critics and fans having to bang our heads on the wall for change. Professional football players are exposed to extreme and unnecessary dangers when playing under current Thursday Night Football conditions. The NFL must improve its image on CTE and safety. There are ways to maintain Thursday Night Football while improving the game and league itself.
Commissioner Goodell spent years reinforcing the motto “Protecting the shield.” Who worries about protecting a shield? The whole purpose of a shield is to protect its user. Is this man paid $50 million annually to worry about the headcount of damaged shields?
F*** the shield. Protect your players. If you don’t protect your players and something happens to them, then your enemies will steal their abandoned weapons to use against you.
…
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Joshua Huffman was born in Middle Tennessee. He has published content for Yahoo! Sports (via Contributor Network) and Titan Sized, among other venues. At SoBros, he’ll provide Daily Fantasy Sports suggestions and broad sports coverage. Follow him on Twitter (although I rarely use it).
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