Next week will be a busy one for the New York Giants.
On Sunday the Giants will host the Atlanta Falcons at Giants Stadium, and four days later -- on Thanksgiving night -- they’ll play the Broncos in Denver. Giants owner John Mara isn’t happy about that schedule.
“It’s not an ideal situation,” Mara told the New York Daily News. “I don’t mind playing on Thanksgiving. My complaint is sending us all the way to Denver on a short week.”
The Giants are far from the only team that has to travel a long distance on a short work week. The Oakland Raiders will be playing at Dallas on Thanksgiving, which is a comparable distance to the Giants’ trip to Denver. And last week the Chicago Bears had to play at San Francisco on a Thursday, which is a longer trip than the one the Giants are taking.
But because it’s happening to his own team, Mara says he wants to do something about it, even though it’s not clear how, exactly, Mara thinks the rules should be written to make sure teams don’t have too difficult a travel schedule during Thanksgiving week.
One option would be to allow teams to volunteer to play on the road on Thanksgiving, but, Mara said, “I don’t know how many volunteers you are going to get.”
Actually, if teams could volunteer to play against the Lions, probably quite a few.