San Francisco receiver Anquan Boldin believes the NFL’s slate of Thursday night games shows that the league’s owners are more concerned about revenue for NFL Network than they are about player safety.
Boldin told the San Jose Mercury News that he believes the league does deserve some credit for certain player safety measures, like mandating that players get cleared by independent neurologists before they can return to the field after suffering head injuries. That doesn’t mean Boldin is on board with everything the league is doing, though.
“But there are some things that just don’t make sense to me,” Boldin said. “I mean if you’re so concerned about player safety then why do you have every team in the league playing on Thursday night when they just competed on a Sunday, knowing how difficult it is for guys to get back to being healthy after playing on Sunday? Guys really don’t feel like they’re back till probably Thursday or Friday to prepare for that next week.”
Boldin also said that some of the league’s safety measures are about “covering their butt,” and he said that he generally doesn’t think the owners care as much about players’ health as they’d like the public to believe.
“The league can say they’re doing things to protect guys, but I’m not one of the guys buying it,” Boldin said.
The Thursday night slate of games are drawing good ratings to NFL Network, which means those games aren’t going away. No matter how much Boldin and his fellow players say three days off for rest and recovery is not enough.