PHILADELPHIA – Thursday night could be the start of one of the NFL’s next great rivalries as Jayden Daniels’ Washington Commanders visit Jalen Hurts and the Philadelphia Eagles with first place in the NFC East on the line.
And that’s a shame.
“Thursday Night Football” isn’t going anywhere because Jeff Bezos and the 1% of the 1% like him are willing to pay for a sizable audience at a time when television and streaming viewing patterns are increasingly fragmented.
That’s just a good thing from a competition perspective, but the product suffers.
The Eagles released their weekly schedule Monday afternoon, which includes a 4:00 PM ET walkthrough on Tuesday and a pre-Gameday walkthrough 24 hours later. That’s it for the on-field preparation for what could be one of the most important games of the season for the two teams expected to battle for the NFC East division title.
That is not unique either.
No one in the NFL has a full practice when Thursday’s game rolls around and the game schedule is scaled back significantly.
Multiple NFL executives have described Thursday games as DNA games, in that due to lack of time you can’t really prepare a specific game plan for the opponent, so the idea is to default to what you do best as a team.
As with most things in the NFL, a standard for handling things was set and everyone else followed suit.
The biggest goal is to retain the players who have to perform twice in five days in a sport that you should not play twice in five days.
However, the lip service of player safety leaves the conversation as soon as the check clears.
As the Eagles prepared for what was a 34-6 loss to the Dallas Cowboys last week, a number of quality control coaches were tasked with beginning preparations for the Commanders in an effort to have as much information as possible at the fingertips of those who play the game planning for the flight back from North Texas Sunday evening.
That’s just business as usual for any team that has to go through the short week at least once a season.
It all seems a little less okay when the stakes are high and the preparation time is significantly reduced.
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