On Thursday’s episode of PFT Live, NBC Sports NFL insider Mike Florio soft launched a theory that could have legs.
Florio, who’s as discerning an NFL observer as just about anyone in sports media, noticed that the Chicago Bears are about to begin a streak of three consecutive primetime games when they kickoff Week 7 on Thursday Night Football against the New England Patriots. The Bears (Weeks 7-9) join the Dallas Cowboys (Weeks 5-7), Seattle Seahawks (Weeks 6-8), Los Angeles Rams (Weeks 1-3), and the Atlanta Falcons (Weeks 3-5) as teams that will have streaks of at least three consecutive primetime affairs this season.
That’s five NFL teams playing in three consecutive primetime games this season. The number of teams that did so last year? Zero.
That struck Florio as quite unusual. Perhaps other than the Kansas City Chiefs or the New England Patriots at the peak of their dynastic powers, it’s difficult to think of instances where a single team ever played in three consecutive primetime games. To have five such teams in a single season is definitely bizarre.
Florio thinks there’s a reason for this. If the NFL ever wanted to introduce a regular package of midweek games on Tuesday or Wednesday night, those games would necessarily require teams to feature in primetime, standalone windows in consecutive weeks. For instance, a team could play Thursday night one week, then Wednesday the following week, and Tuesday after that. That’d give teams the requisite amount of rest between games, while still allowing the NFL to take advantage of these open midweek windows.
It stands to reason that the NFL would want to test how audiences react to seeing the same teams in primetime during three consecutive weeks. Would fans lose interest? Or conversely, would fans become more interested in seeing the same teams repeatedly? And how would the teams themselves handle playing three straight night games?
These are all key data points the NFL would like to have if they were ever to seriously consider creating a Wednesday or a Tuesday package.
The league claimed last month that the consecutive primetime games were simply a quirk in this year’s schedule.
“[T]his happens a few times a year and was not intentional, but rather a function of how the overall 272-game schedule works out,” a league spokesperson told Forbes. “It’s a combination of opponents, stadium availability, viewership predictions, network requests, etc.”
NFL executives have repeatedly insisted the league will tread lightly on adding any more midweek contests to the schedule. Ratings data for the first Wednesday game this season, the season opener featuring the Seahawks and Patriots, were already soft compared to the normal Thursday opener. The next Wednesday data point will come on Thanksgiving Eve, when the Packers play the Rams.
The NFL, to its credit, is always quite diligent in making these types of schedule changes, at least in terms of the league’s sensitivity to viewership trends. (Player welfare is another issue entirely.) The league has only begun scheduling regular games on Christmas, Black Friday, and now Thanksgiving Eve because the viewership data suggests there’s a demand for it. The fate of a midweek package likely comes down to how strong consumers desire one.
It’s too early to tell whether this primetime experiment is simply the NFL doing its due diligence or something that signals the league is more likely than not to explore a midweek package in the future. But it’s clear the NFL is up to something with this type of scheduling; it’s too strange to be a coincidence.
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