When the 2012 regular-season schedule lands at 7:00 p.m. ET, one of the first things I’ll check is the slate of Thursday games, including the trio of Thanksgiving games. With expanded use of the short week, it’s important to ensure that the teams that play in games with limited preparation get a fair shake to prepare.
That includes, as the league has done recently, ensuring that the road team for a Thursday game plays a home game the prior Sunday, resulting in only one travel obligation. Ideally, the home team for the Thursday games will have played on the road the prior Sunday, meaning that each team will have to use some of the limited time to get ready for the game traveling.
Of course, the best approach would be to have teams play on Thursdays after a bye week, giving them a shortened bye on the front end and a shortened bye on the back end -- and end result of playing only one time in the 20-day stretch between Sunday games.
We’ll know within three hours how it all shakes out for 2012, and we’ll break it all down right here. Until then, here’s some more chatter about the Thursday night dynamic from PFT Live.