I have been thinking long and hard about the NFL schedule and really believe these Thursday Night games offer a real scheduling advantage for the teams playing in them. The advantage isn't really in the game itself but rather for an advantage teams realize the next week.
Obviously as there are two teams playing on Thursday so neither has a real advantage although the away team will have even less time than usual to prepare and must deal with a compacted travel schedule in addition to a compacted practice schedule
But even this is not much different than any road team on any given week, the real unfair advantage is the one both participants gain the next week
Take the last two weeks for example. Two weeks ago both the Giants and Panthers played on Sunday in week 2 and then turned around and played four days later on Thursday in week 3. But now we're up against week 4 and both the Panthers and Giants are coming of a pseudo bye-week with 10 days since their last game but both their opponents (The Eagles and the Falcons) are coming off 7 day weeks. So although neither the Giants or the Panthers had a disadvantage over the other based on the schedule in week 3 they both have an advantage in week 4 by being more rested than their opponent something both teams can desperately use already with both having an outsized share of injuries already
I bet that when all is set and done, Vegas will show that teams coming off a Thursday night game (win or lose) win a disproportionate amount of games the next week.
Sent from my iPhone
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