NFL (2024 Season)

[Alps]

Those fluorescent green jerseys the Seattle Football Team are wearing tonight are hideous. They remind me of the old Orlando Thunder of the WLAF almost 30 years ago, though I seem to recall the Thunder's jerseys seeming to be an even more cloyingly bright color. Whether that was because of the lousier TV picture back then, stadium lighting issues, or just the mental cobwebs that accumulate over 30 years, I have no idea.



As an aside, turning to this game and seeing Kirk Cousins playing was sort of striking. Recall the Redskins (clearly the right name in the time period I'm about to mention) had Robert Griffin anointed as the quarterback of the future only to see him lose his job to Cousins, who wore jersey #8 (same as he does in Minnesota). They now have Dwayne Haskins, who just lost his job to Kyle Allen, who wears jersey #8. Obviously, if you're going to start in Washington, you need to insist your backup not wear #8. 

I don't care if you want to refer to any given team as any particular name. Football Team or otherwise. Please stop posting about it. I will start issuing warnings after this. Thanks.

[amroad17]

Those fluorescent green jerseys the Seattle Football Team are wearing tonight are hideous. They remind me of the old Orlando Thunder of the WLAF almost 30 years ago, though I seem to recall the Thunder's jerseys seeming to be an even more cloyingly bright color. Whether that was because of the lousier TV picture back then, stadium lighting issues, or just the mental cobwebs that accumulate over 30 years, I have no idea.



As an aside, turning to this game and seeing Kirk Cousins playing was sort of striking. Recall the Redskins (clearly the right name in the time period I'm about to mention) had Robert Griffin anointed as the quarterback of the future only to see him lose his job to Cousins, who wore jersey #8 (same as he does in Minnesota). They now have Dwayne Haskins, who just lost his job to Kyle Allen, who wears jersey #8. Obviously, if you're going to start in Washington, you need to insist your backup not wear #8. 

It didn't work for Bob Holly back in 1983.  Maybe if he stuck around through 1985...

It was great to see Alex Smith back on the field.  And hoping for a total recovery for Dak.

[1995hoo]

Those fluorescent green jerseys the Seattle Football Team are wearing tonight are hideous. They remind me of the old Orlando Thunder of the WLAF almost 30 years ago, though I seem to recall the Thunder's jerseys seeming to be an even more cloyingly bright color. Whether that was because of the lousier TV picture back then, stadium lighting issues, or just the mental cobwebs that accumulate over 30 years, I have no idea.



As an aside, turning to this game and seeing Kirk Cousins playing was sort of striking. Recall the Redskins (clearly the right name in the time period I'm about to mention) had Robert Griffin anointed as the quarterback of the future only to see him lose his job to Cousins, who wore jersey #8 (same as he does in Minnesota). They now have Dwayne Haskins, who just lost his job to Kyle Allen, who wears jersey #8. Obviously, if you're going to start in Washington, you need to insist your backup not wear #8. 

It didn't work for Bob Holly back in 1983.  Maybe if he stuck around through 1985...

It was great to see Alex Smith back on the field.  And hoping for a total recovery for Dak.

Heh, and Bob Holly was backing up Joe Theismann, who wore #7 (as Haskins does as well). Maybe it's Dan Snyder—related. Certainly people here blame Snyder for just about everything that's wrong with that franchise. For those of us who grew up during their glory years in the 1980s, it's been sad to see how largely irrelevant they've become, even on the local sports scene.

[amroad17]

I will agree with you on the lessening importance of the Redskins/Football Team in Washington and the surrounding areas which were Redskin strongholds.  There used to be an incredible waiting list for tickets to the games--now, I don't believe there is much of one now.  Snyder has plenty to do with the current state of the team, however, the demise began the day after Joe Gibbs retired the first time after the 1992 season.  The Redskins were still important throughout the rest of the 1990's but as long as Snyder owns the team, us long-term Redskins fans will probably never sniff anything like the glory days of the Gibbs era.

Throughout the 1980's and early 1990's I would try to watch or listen to every Redskins game--even on dates with my now wife.  It did help that she was a devout Redskins fan also.  Of course, if I did watch the games, the TV sound was off and the radio broadcast was on my stereo system (yes, an 80's system complete with semi-large speakers).  There was nothing like hearing Frank Herzog, Sam Huff, and Sonny Jurgensen doing the broadcast, punctuated by Frank's call after every Redskins touchdown, "Touchdown! Washington Redskins!".  I, just like 1995hoo, miss those days--when Washington Redskins football was fun and meaningful.

[Alps]

I will agree with you on the lessening importance of the Redskins/Football Team in Washington and the surrounding areas which were Redskin strongholds.  There used to be an incredible waiting list for tickets to the games--now, I don't believe there is much of one now.  Snyder has plenty to do with the current state of the team, however, the demise began the day after Joe Gibbs retired the first time after the 1992 season.  The Redskins were still important throughout the rest of the 1990's but as long as Snyder owns the team, us long-term Redskins fans will probably never sniff anything like the glory days of the Gibbs era.

Can vouch up here that PSL's killed off Jets and Giants fandoms. Growing up, they said to get your name on the Jets list when you're born, and maybe you'll get on it before you retire. PSL's come, suddenly no waiting list. They realized how badly they had done it, but it was too late.

[1995hoo]

I don't think the Redskins sold PSLs when Jack Kent Cooke built what is now FedEx Field, although the suites, club seats, and loge seats (none of which count towards sellouts per NFL rules) are subject to multiple-year contracts, and that's proved to be its own source of bad publicity for Snyder, especially during the 2008 recession–when people encountered hard times and had trouble paying the contractual prices on schedule, the Redskins sued some of them.

We have a friend who used to have Caps season tickets down the row from our seats. She and her husband were also long-standing Redskins season ticket holders. She had to give up the Caps tickets because attending became too much of a burden as her husband suffered from Alzheimer's. No problem there with the Caps at all, although it's fair to recognize those are sold year-by-year. He died about five years ago and she wanted to give up the Redskins tickets as well, in part because she didn't want to attend games alone, but the Redskins said no dice–you committed to buying these tickets and you, or your estate if you die too, will keep paying for them. (They didn't have premium tickets, either, but apparently the tickets were still sold on a multi-year basis. I don't know all the details.) Stuff like that is a real turnoff to dealing with that franchise. I mean, I understand the principle of a contract being a binding contract, but on the other hand, there's something reasonable to the idea of working with your customers, especially someone like her who had been a customer for over 50 years.

I've never bought Redskins season tickets for several reasons, including (but not necessarily limited to) the franchise's reputation for suing customers if they can't pay, the nuisance of getting to games at FedEx Field, my own declining interest in football compared to hockey, the fact that we have Caps season tickets (enough of a cost and time commitment without football), the fact that we gave up our UVA football season tickets after the 2009 season, and the general bad reputation the FedEx Field game day atmosphere has in terms of a lot of drunken fighting going on (no doubt not helped by the increasing hordes of opposing fans who attend games there as local fans lose interest).

[1995hoo]

Not sure what the correct smiley to use with this one is!

https://twitter.com/NickiJhabvala/status/1316124881029824512?s=20

[thspfc]

I'm not sure what to think about "Tuesday Night Football". It just feels so wrong. NFL football is supposed to be many games on Sunday and one game on Monday only! Thursday Night Football to open the season is cool when it's the reigning champion, but other than that it feels forced and gimmicky. 

[thspfc]

I have never understood why people fork over tons of cash to be told, "yeah, hopefully you'll get the return product before you die". If you want to go to games that bad and have that kind of money to throw around, why not just buy tickets to each upcoming game individually?

[jeffandnicole]

I'm not sure what to think about "Tuesday Night Football". It just feels so wrong. NFL football is supposed to be many games on Sunday and one game on Monday only! Thursday Night Football to open the season is cool when it's the reigning champion, but other than that it feels forced and gimmicky. 

What about the Saturday games in December?

[thspfc]

I'm not sure what to think about "Tuesday Night Football". It just feels so wrong. NFL football is supposed to be many games on Sunday and one game on Monday only! Thursday Night Football to open the season is cool when it's the reigning champion, but other than that it feels forced and gimmicky. 

What about the Saturday games in December?

I don't like them either. Or the Saturday playoff games.

[1995hoo]

Whereas I've thought for several years that having the Super Bowl on Saturday would be useful. Lets everyone stay up late, eat what they want, etc., and have all day Sunday to deal with the hangovers and digestive distress that may accompany the sorts of things a lot of people eat at those sorts of events, rather than disrupting the work day Monday.

Football on Tuesday is a little bit weird, but they had a good reason for it under the circumstances. Hockey in August was pretty weird too, after all. I expect the NFL will wind up playing the season over 18 weeks, but it makes sense to try to get games in as early as possible so as to leave room for slippage later if more games need to be postponed. (It would have been funny if the Tuesday night game had been played on November 3, though!)

[webny99]

Well, I've been here when the Bills are good, so I might as well be here when they're bad, too.
In a terrible 42-16 loss to the Titans, Tre White was badly missed on defense, which allowed 40 points for the first time since Nathan Peterman.

[NWI_Irish96]

I'm not sure what to think about "Tuesday Night Football". It just feels so wrong. NFL football is supposed to be many games on Sunday and one game on Monday only! Thursday Night Football to open the season is cool when it's the reigning champion, but other than that it feels forced and gimmicky. 

What about the Saturday games in December?

Saturday games are OK when there are no college games, and Thursday games on Thanksgiving and the season opener are fine, but the rest of the Thursday slate needs to go. Players hate them. I get that we had to have games on Tuesday because this is 2020, but let's not explore that as a permanent idea. I don't mind having Monday doubleheaders. If we shift all those Thursday games to extra Monday games that would be great.

[1995hoo]

I seem to recall once upon a time, when Thursday night games were rare, they used to air on ABC as a "Monday Night Football Special Thursday Edition" or something like that.

I feel like the combination of Thursday games with the "Color Rush" uniform thing has made it a little bit gimmicky. The uniforms can look rather overdone or garish at times. It's sort of like they don't know when to leave well enough alone–reminds me a bit of how the NHL decided that because the Winter Classic was successful, in the 2013—14 season they would have six outdoor games.

Since every team now plays a Thursday night game, it seems like it should be feasible to schedule a team's "bye week" prior to the Thursday night game, which in theory would resolve some of the players' complaints.

[thspfc]

Ah yes, I forgot about the Thanksgiving games. Those are cool too. So it would look like this:
Week 1: TNF with defending champion hosting, one MNF game, the rest on Sunday
Weeks 2-11/12: all on Sunday except for one MNF
Week 12 or 13 depending on where Thanksgiving falls: three Thursday games, one MNF, the rest on Sunday
Weeks 12/13-16: all on Sunday except for one MNF
Week 17 and playoffs: all on Sunday

[1995hoo]

Ah yes, I forgot about the Thanksgiving games. Those are cool too. So it would look like this:
Week 1: TNF with defending champion hosting, one MNF game, the rest on Sunday
Weeks 2-11/12: all on Sunday except for one MNF
Week 12 or 13 depending on where Thanksgiving falls: three Thursday games, one MNF, the rest on Sunday
Weeks 12/13-16: all on Sunday except for one MNF
Week 17 and playoffs: all on Sunday

One clarificatory question: How do you feel about years when Christmas falls on Sunday? That will next happen in 2022. Usually the NFL moves the majority of that week's slate to Saturday. For many years they avoided playing any games at all on Christmas, no doubt due to all the negative publicity and feedback they got from the 1971 AFC playoff game between the Chiefs and Dolphins on Christmas Day that went to double overtime and is still the longest NFL game ever played (not the longest pro football game, but the longest NFL game), but more recently they've played two games on Christmas Day when it falls on Sunday or Monday.

I don't know whether it's mathematically possible for Christmas Day to fall on a Monday of Week 17, in which case there would be no Monday night game. I suspect not, seeing as how the regular season invariably seems to end the first weekend of January since the league moved the first week of the season to the weekend after Labor Day.

[thspfc]

Ah yes, I forgot about the Thanksgiving games. Those are cool too. So it would look like this:
Week 1: TNF with defending champion hosting, one MNF game, the rest on Sunday
Weeks 2-11/12: all on Sunday except for one MNF
Week 12 or 13 depending on where Thanksgiving falls: three Thursday games, one MNF, the rest on Sunday
Weeks 12/13-16: all on Sunday except for one MNF
Week 17 and playoffs: all on Sunday

One clarificatory question: How do you feel about years when Christmas falls on Sunday? That will next happen in 2022. Usually the NFL moves the majority of that week's slate to Saturday. For many years they avoided playing any games at all on Christmas, no doubt due to all the negative publicity and feedback they got from the 1971 AFC playoff game between the Chiefs and Dolphins on Christmas Day that went to double overtime and is still the longest NFL game ever played (not the longest pro football game, but the longest NFL game), but more recently they've played two games on Christmas Day when it falls on Sunday or Monday.

I don't know whether it's mathematically possible for Christmas Day to fall on a Monday of Week 17, in which case there would be no Monday night game. I suspect not, seeing as how the regular season invariably seems to end the first weekend of January since the league moved the first week of the season to the weekend after Labor Day.

I usually don't even notice when the NFL moves games away from Christmas, since all the days of that part of the year sort of blend together. But yes, I agree that there is no need to play games on Christmas, especially since some teams are already playing on Thanksgiving.

IIRC, the final day of the regular season is in January two out every five years. In 2015 it was the 3rd, in 2016 it was the 1st, in 2017 it was the 31st of December, in 2018 it was the 30th, and in 2019 it was the 29th. This year it will be the 3rd of January again.

[1995hoo]

No Pro Bowl this year. It was scheduled to be held in Las Vegas the weekend before the Super Bowl, but today the league cancelled it. Given all the speculation that the regular season may run a week longer than planned, that arguably gives them more flexibility to play the Super Bowl as scheduled by just eliminating the week off after the conference championships (which they have done in the past; the 1982 season is a notable example in my mind when they expanded the playoffs after the strike-shortened season).

[thspfc]

No Pro Bowl this year. It was scheduled to be held in Las Vegas the weekend before the Super Bowl, but today the league cancelled it. Given all the speculation that the regular season may run a week longer than planned, that arguably gives them more flexibility to play the Super Bowl as scheduled by just eliminating the week off after the conference championships (which they have done in the past; the 1982 season is a notable example in my mind when they expanded the playoffs after the strike-shortened season).

Can't help but wonder if this is the end of the Pro Bowl.

[NWI_Irish96]

Ah yes, I forgot about the Thanksgiving games. Those are cool too. So it would look like this:
Week 1: TNF with defending champion hosting, one MNF game, the rest on Sunday
Weeks 2-11/12: all on Sunday except for one MNF
Week 12 or 13 depending on where Thanksgiving falls: three Thursday games, one MNF, the rest on Sunday
Weeks 12/13-16: all on Sunday except for one MNF
Week 17 and playoffs: all on Sunday

One clarificatory question: How do you feel about years when Christmas falls on Sunday? That will next happen in 2022. Usually the NFL moves the majority of that week's slate to Saturday. For many years they avoided playing any games at all on Christmas, no doubt due to all the negative publicity and feedback they got from the 1971 AFC playoff game between the Chiefs and Dolphins on Christmas Day that went to double overtime and is still the longest NFL game ever played (not the longest pro football game, but the longest NFL game), but more recently they've played two games on Christmas Day when it falls on Sunday or Monday.

I don't know whether it's mathematically possible for Christmas Day to fall on a Monday of Week 17, in which case there would be no Monday night game. I suspect not, seeing as how the regular season invariably seems to end the first weekend of January since the league moved the first week of the season to the weekend after Labor Day.

They are adding a game and two weeks to the schedule beginning in 2021, so I have no idea how that is going to work, but as it has been until this year, the earliest W1 Sunday is 9/7 and the latest is 9/13 (as it was this year). That puts the earliest W17 Sunday at 12/28 and the latest at 1/3. On any potential game date, Christmas would be part of week 16.

The NFL moved week 1 off Labor Day weekend several years ago due to poor TV ratings, so my guess is that Week 1 stays where it is and what used to be the Wild Card and Divisional rounds will become weeks 18 and 19. This would mean that no more Super Bowls on my birthday but there would be conference championship games.

Fun trivia: Rex Grossman and Tom Brady are currently the only quarterbacks ever to lose games on my birthday.

[nexus73]

Ah yes, I forgot about the Thanksgiving games. Those are cool too. So it would look like this:
Week 1: TNF with defending champion hosting, one MNF game, the rest on Sunday
Weeks 2-11/12: all on Sunday except for one MNF
Week 12 or 13 depending on where Thanksgiving falls: three Thursday games, one MNF, the rest on Sunday
Weeks 12/13-16: all on Sunday except for one MNF
Week 17 and playoffs: all on Sunday

One clarificatory question: How do you feel about years when Christmas falls on Sunday? That will next happen in 2022. Usually the NFL moves the majority of that week's slate to Saturday. For many years they avoided playing any games at all on Christmas, no doubt due to all the negative publicity and feedback they got from the 1971 AFC playoff game between the Chiefs and Dolphins on Christmas Day that went to double overtime and is still the longest NFL game ever played (not the longest pro football game, but the longest NFL game), but more recently they've played two games on Christmas Day when it falls on Sunday or Monday.

I don't know whether it's mathematically possible for Christmas Day to fall on a Monday of Week 17, in which case there would be no Monday night game. I suspect not, seeing as how the regular season invariably seems to end the first weekend of January since the league moved the first week of the season to the weekend after Labor Day.

I remember watching that game.  It was a real dandy!  The outcome led to the Chiefs not seeing the playoffs for a very long time while the Dolphins had a nice little dynasty going with three straight Super Bowl appearances, going 2-1 with one of those seasons being the Perfect Season. 

Rick

[triplemultiplex]

Can't help but wonder if this is the end of the Pro Bowl.

I won't shed a tear.
Now you don't even get a trip to Hawaii, so what's the point?  Any degen with a SouthWest ticket can go to Vegas for 89 bucks.  It's a shit city unworthy of pro sports.
The Orlando of the West.

[jeffandnicole]

I don't know whether it's mathematically possible for Christmas Day to fall on a Monday of Week 17, in which case there would be no Monday night game. I suspect not, seeing as how the regular season invariably seems to end the first weekend of January since the league moved the first week of the season to the weekend after Labor Day.

The NFL doesn't play a Monday night game the final week of the season. Even a Sunday night game isn't guaranteed, and they decide after Week 16 whether there will be one. Otherwise for Week 17, there's 1 game on Thursday night, with the remainder played Sunday at 1 & 4:25pm (ET).

[ilpt4u]

I don't know whether it's mathematically possible for Christmas Day to fall on a Monday of Week 17, in which case there would be no Monday night game. I suspect not, seeing as how the regular season invariably seems to end the first weekend of January since the league moved the first week of the season to the weekend after Labor Day.

It's irrelevant, because the NFL doesn't play a Monday night game the final week of the season. Even a Sunday night game isn't guaranteed, and they decide after Week 16 whether there will be one. Otherwise for Week 17, there's 1 game on Thursday night, with the remainder played Sunday at 1 & 4:25pm (ET).

There is no TNF Week 17.

All Week 17 games are played on Sunday, and every team plays a Divisional Opponent

If Divisional Title game and/or Playoff games depend on other games results, those games are all placed in the same timeslot/either 1 ET or 4:25 ET. Also both FOX and CBS have Doubleheaders Week 17. SNF on NBC takes a "Win and you're in"  game that does not depend on the other game results, whenever possible. Even better if it is a "Win and In"  game for both teams, typically a Division Title game scenario

All of this is within the 16 game schedule. When it goes to 17 games, that remains to be seen. Also this schedule formula came about with the realignment to 8 Divisions and with Flex Scheduling for SNF on NBC