Thursday, August 30th, 2007 by Adam Wagner
Any Given Thursday?
What is the NFL thinking? In between dealing with Pacman Jones, Chris Henry, Tom Brady’s babies, their coaches wearing suits, and that guy that fought dogs, they should have found some time to do legitimate scheduling instead of having the Steelers play games four days apart.
Yes, it’s the preseason and no, the players are not hitting that hard, but they are still hitting harder than most normal human beings think and they are still being at least somewhat competitive. Injuries do still happen (see Hines Wards’ broken nose) and anyone who thinks otherwise should be forced to watch the clip of Michael Vick breaking his leg 100 times consecutively with the Joe Theisman clip (just for good measure, even though it didn’t happen in the preseason) thrown in after every five Vick clips.
Players need time to bounce back from games. There’s a reason the NFL typically plays its game one week apart and it’s not for more planning. It’s because players need time to recover from the intense conflict that they put themselves through. Honestly, get 21 of your buddies together and go play flag football. You’ll be limping around for a week after one of them makes an “accidental” hit and accidentally runs into your knee. And NFL players are in much better shape than you guys.
This is not the only time that the Steelers are playing a Thursday night game immediately following a Sunday game, however. On December 20, the Steelers head to St. Louis for a game against the Rams. That game is a Thursday immediately following a Sunday, December 16 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. The NFL is screwing itself over along with the Steelers, as the Rams and the Steelers would normally be a very attractive matchup (Bulger Vs. the hometown team, Jackson Vs. the defense, Ben and Willie on turf, etc.). Instead, it will be two exhausted teams playing games and dealing with various nagging injuries that could turn into larger issues unless the coaches deal with the situation strategically.
Both teams will probably be borderline playoff contenders, and one serious injury due to playing two games in four days could knock either one of them out of contention. That is simply not fair and further proves that the NFL is all about the Benjamins.
This is the league, after all, where Reebok designs suits and Michael Vick reportedly has four or five suitors for when he tries to make a comeback (I can see Al Davis now . . . “Can you imagine him in a backfield with JaMarcus Russell and Darren McFadden? It’ll be like we had four #1 picks in a row!”).
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