I heard it the first time on the Dan Patrick show on Wednesday and I heard it again today. Terry Bradshaw during the postgame show after Tennessee pasted Detroit said “The Lions usually have pretty good bite on Thanksgiving, but not today.”
This isn’t to single out Bradshaw – my brother heard one of the Westwood One radio guys say something similar. But the results – both this year and over the last eight – just don’t bear that out. The now 11-1 Titans collected a turnover and turned it into a score during the first couple minutes of the game and then toyed with the Lions, taking a 35-10 lead into halftime.
And this means that during the last eight Thanksgiving day games, during which the Detroit is 1-7, the Lions have been outscored 242-123.
There’s been talk lately of revamping the Thanksgiving day slate of games and, frankly, both of the early games today were boring and void of suspense. The Lions have yet to win a game and by the five minute mark of the first quarter the only mystery left was by how much they would lose today. In the afternoon game it wasn’t necessarily Dallas’ fault that Seattle comes in beaten up and strugging. But again, other than a brief period in the third quarter when the Seahawks held Dallas on a couple drives in a row, there really wasn’t much doubt that the Cowboys were well in control.
The NFL Network night game looks to be a fairly decent matchup with a desperate Philadelphia team hosting an Arizona Cardinals franchise eager to win its first division and host its first playoff game since the mid 1970s. While I have no issue with the tradition of Dallas and Detroit hosting the games it certainly wouldn’t bother me to actually see games with some playoff implication.
Flex scheduling? That’d be an option, albeit hard for selling tickets. Alternating hosts such as is done during the preseason games hosted internationally or the Hall of Fame game? Another compelling option.
It’s not a major issue with me. I’ll watch either way. But it would be nice for my Thanksgiving nap to be brought on by the overconsumption of comfort food rather than the boredom associated with many of the NFL games played on Thanksgiving this year and in many other years in the recent past.
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