We can go ahead and add yet another name to the growing chorus of people that are not fans of the NFL's "Thursday Night Football" experiment. Buffalo Bills guard Richie Incognito, speaking after his team got its doors blown off by the division rival New York Jets on Thursday, took the league to task for making players play on Thursday nights.
"Yeah, you know, it's tough," Incognito said, per USA Today. "These Thursday night games -- they suck. They throw a wrench in our schedule. It's absolutely ridiculous that we have to do this. As physical as this game is, as much work and preparation that goes into this, to force us to play games in four-day weeks is completely unfair. And it's bulls---."
The Thursday games have been criticized by everyone from John Madden to Richard Sherman.
"Something has to be done about 'Thursday Night Football.' It just doesn't work," Madden said last year. "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. I know about money, and I know about business. Maybe you have to tweak stuff a little more. To help teams, maybe you get a bye the week before."
Sherman called Thursday night games a "poopfest" last December. "It's hypocritical, as I've stated before. They make this huge stance about player safety. Then you put the players in tremendous danger. ... There's really not much you can do right now. It's part of the revenue, etc., etc. And the league probably has something else up their sleeve. They might have a Friday night game planned. Who knows?"
There's no question that the quality of Thursday night games is generally lacking compared to those played on full rest, and the point about the NFL's hypocrisy in stressing player safety while also forcing teams to play two games in five days is obviously well-taken. These games aren't going anywhere, though, because they make the NFL more money. And as Sherman said, that's really all they care about.
