JGKAMIN wrote:NFL sure cares about player safety when they play on Sunday and then have to travel on a short week and play a few days later. Not fair for anyone to have such a short week, and if so you shouldn’t be traveling to do it as they can tie the bye weeks in to minimize this.
Iirc, in the beginning of the Thursday Night games, the matchups would be intra-divisional and both teams would be coming off their byes. Thus, Thursday games didn’t start till around Week 5 but ended around Week 12. Not sure what changed that but it’s gotta be because of money.
As the opportunity for both the League and the players to make more money by expanding TNF games, that change would lead to bigger TV contracts which led to a bigger salary cap which led to bigger player salaries.
So, to me, there’s shared blame.
The NFL expanded the number of games, took the bigger TV contracts and the NFLPA said, “Okay, the players will get more money so we’ll agree to more Thursday games despite the player safety challenges.”
As the Brains once sang, money changes everything.
https://youtu.be/zLWbp3w2eqM