Retired Patriots safety takes shot at quality of 'Thursday Night Football' games

Retired New England Patriots safety Devin McCourty understands why NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is keen on adding "Thursday Night Football" games to the league's flex scheduling as soon as possible. 

"I’m not surprised because some of those Thursday night games at the end of the year … I’m really into football, and I’m watching another TV show instead," McCourty admitted to Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated. 

McCourty is hardly the only noteworthy member of the NFL community to take a shot at the quality of "Thursday Night Football" contests since the start of the 2022 season. 

Retired quarterback Tom Brady generated headlines when he said in October he had noticed "a lot of bad football" throughout the campaign. 

In January, legendary play-by-play broadcaster Al Michaels compared calling "Thursday Night Football" games for Amazon Prime Video to selling "a 20-year-old Mazda," while ESPN's Troy Aikman pointed out around that same time he had watched "some bad, bad football being played" during the season. 

Individuals such as New York Giants co-owner John Mara have mentioned that flexing games from a Sunday window to a Thursday night would inconvenience players who need to recover after grueling weekend matchups and fans who have tickets and hotel reservations for contests originally scheduled to be played on Sunday afternoons. 

Nevertheless, McCourty seems to see the writing on the wall as it pertains to Goodell eventually getting his way. 

"As a player, you care about player safety," McCourty added during his comments. "But when we get in our meetings, and we’re talking about the money and making XYZ, that all plays a part. And as much as those TV deals go up, the cap goes up, players make more money, it all kind of goes hand-in-hand. But I think you alluded to it — I don’t think we can turn it into just a money thing. Because then guys are gonna get hurt, and they’re going to get hurt at a high level." 

Amazon is reportedly paying $1.2B per year for the "Thursday Night Football" broadcast rights and understandably wants top-tier games on a weekly basis. 

According to NBC Sports' Peter King and Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio, Goodell needs only two more "yes" votes among 10 owners (eight no votes, abstentions from the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos) during the next league session in late May to get flex scheduling for Thursday nights. 

"The numbers for Amazon’s first foray, an average audience of 9.6 million, weren’t good enough," Florio wrote. "The league needs to do something to beef things up, to elevate the floor. To push the number back toward the 20 million or so who watched Thursday night games on Fox."