On Tuesday, the NFL announced that there will be two Thursday Night Football games every season instead of the one that was then the norm. Teams will be playing games on two short weeks later on in the season.
Immediately after this was announced by the league, backlash from players, owners, and fans criticizing the NFL for going forward with this amendment. This will wear on the players as they will be more beaten toward the end of the regular season and wouldn’t get enough time to recover.
Super Bowl LVII MVP Patrick Mahomes was one of the players who wasn’t entirely satisfied with the new changes announced by the league. He tweeted a facepalm emoji which is the equivalent of people showing frustration. The league increased the regular season games to 18 weeks and now making them play two games within a span of just 3 days is unfair to the players.
Former NFL quarterback turned analyst Robert Griffin III also pointed out the flaw in the league’s latest development. He tweeted, “The NFL is now allowing teams to have TWO Thursday Night Football games per year. A league that continuously says it is all about improving player safety continues to put the health of its players at risk. Playing 1 game with only 3 days rest isn’t smart. Playing 2 is RIDICULOUS.”
Patrick Mahomes is back to training after an injury during the postseason
Patrick Mahomes injured himself during the divisional playoff games against the Jaguars. Despite not being 100 percent, Mahomes played in the Super Bowl and aggravated his injury by running the ball more than a few times. Post winning the Lombardi Trophy, fans were extremely tense as they believed the superstar quarterback won’t recover in time for the Week 1 game of the next season.
However, head coach Andy Reid gave an update during the NFL’s annual meeting. Coach Reid said the 27-year-old is back to training and throwing darts in practice which came as a sign of relief for the Chiefs Kingdom.
With the league enforcing the new TNF change, teams will have a hard time trying to get players their much-needed rest during the final few weeks of the regular season and heading into the postseason. New York Giants John Mara expressed his displeasure with the league’s new rules. “If you’re gonna add a second one, and it’s gonna be late in the season, when players’ bodies are a little more beaten up and battered than they were maybe earlier in the season, I think we need to look at that,” he said.
With all the backlash coming, the league might be tempted to revise their change as team owners and players are at the forefront of opposing the change. Let’s see how it all plays out in the next few weeks.
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